How are young people shaping the work?
Young people bring knowledge about their own lives, communities, relationships, and experiences that adults and institutions cannot fully understand on their behalf. CSAW works to create meaningful opportunities for youth to inform research, prevention, community engagement, and the questions we ask about childhood safety and wellbeing.
Youth engagement can take many forms—from advising on projects and interpreting findings to developing resources, identifying priorities, and helping shape prevention recommendations. CSAW is continuing to strengthen the ways young people participate across our work.
Listening Before Building
Prevention Education and Advocacy for Childhood Empowerment (PEACE)
In 2023, CSAW’s PEACE workgroup set out to better understand how young people and adults who work with youth experience the strengths, needs, and gaps in local violence prevention efforts.
Through 116 conversations with Lane County youth and adults who work with youth, the project identified recommendations for prevention that better reflect cultural, contextual, and community realities.
What CSAW learned through PEACE helped inform local and statewide prevention work and contributed to the creation of CSAW’s Youth Advisory Council.
Youth Leadership in Practice
Youth Advisory Council
CSAW’s Youth Advisory Council provides recommendations that inform CSAW’s research, prevention, community engagement, and youth-focused projects. Members also develop context-specific resources and build skills as violence prevention advocates in Lane County communities.
The YAC currently recruits rural Lane County youth ages 14–19. Members meet weekly on Zoom and periodically in person to share perspectives, develop projects, and contribute to CSAW’s work.
One example is the YAC’s youth resource guide, developed to help young people find youth-centered supports and services in their communities.
Learn More About Joining the YAC
Explore the Youth Resource Guide →
Youth Leadership in Action
Bringing Youth Perspectives to a National Audience
Youth Advisory Council members have helped move youth perspectives beyond CSAW’s own projects and into broader prevention conversations. In 2025, YAC members developed a video about the role of youth voice in violence prevention through peer-to-peer interviews about their experiences contributing to the work.
The video was featured at the Prevent Child Abuse America Conference during CSAW’s presentation, Transforming the Narrative: Youth-Led Solutions to Prevent Child Maltreatment in Lane County, Oregon.
The project is one example of youth members not only offering feedback, but creating resources, interpreting their own experiences, and communicating prevention ideas to wider audiences.
Youth Perspectives Inform Research
Oregon Child Abuse Prevalence Study (OCAPS)
Youth engagement is also part of how CSAW approaches research. In connection with the Oregon Child Abuse Prevalence Study, CSAW conducted informational interviews with youth and adults to better understand gaps in child maltreatment prevention and how young people experience the systems and conditions surrounding them.
These conversations help bring community and lived experience into the research process, identify questions that may otherwise be overlooked, and strengthen CSAW’s ability to center youth perspectives in how we understand safety, harm, and prevention.
Youth Leadership Shapes School Practice
Senate for Safe Schools
In partnership with the Ford Family Foundation, South Coast Education Service District, CSAW, and Cultivate, a student-led leadership initiative called the Senate for Safe Schools was formed.
Students created two professional development training videos for school staff focused on trauma-informed schools and positive school climates.
The project shows how youth can contribute directly to professional learning by identifying what matters to students and helping translate those perspectives into resources for the adults and systems around them.
More Ways Young People Contribute
Youth and student leadership also show up across CSAW’s community partnerships. Voices of Change for Child Safety, a student-led University of Oregon organization, creates opportunities for students to contribute to violence prevention, develop resources for student audiences, and connect campus learning with community-based prevention efforts.
