|
About Adam Fletcher
Adam is an internationally-recognized expert on
community engagement and is the founder of SoundOut and
The Freechild Project. The author of dozens of
publications, he consults with schools, community
organizations, and government agencies across the US and
Canada to promote meaningful and sustained approaches to
community engagement. He uses more than 20 years
experience working with small nonprofits, federal
government agencies, and national foundations to promote
effective approaches to successfully connecting people
to the places they live in deep and meaningful ways.
Drawing on more than 20 years experience in the arena of
youth engagement, Adam Fletcher is one of the nation's
leading advocates for meaningful youth involvement. An
author, speaker, researcher, and facilitator, Adam draws
on his experience working in education, nonprofits,
government, and public health to promote a systemic,
holistic perspective of community engagement for
children, youth, and adults throughout society.
Adam's professional work with youth began in 1989 when
he was 14 with a local nonprofit in North Omaha,
Nebraska. He worked over the next 7 years teaching drama
programs and leading after school programs and a
basketball program. Adam's activism began when he was 15
when he started an environmental justice group at his
high school as a protest against the existing science
club. His systems change efforts focused on meaningful
youth involvement started when he was young, as well,
founding a youth council for his neighborhood when he
was 17. He has continued working both inside and outside
of systems since.
Since 1998 Adam has worked with approximately 50,000
children, youth and adults, focusing on youth
engagement, meaningful student involvement, community
organizing and service learning through a variety of
speaking, professional development, training and program
development activities. His activities have reached
almost 250 elementary, middle and high schools, along
with more than 300 nonprofit organizations across the
United States and Canada, and in United Kingdom and
Brazil. Adam has consulted more than 100 schools on how
to effectively infuse youth voice in service learning.
Aside from schools and nonprofits, he has also worked
with foundations, government agencies, colleges and
universities, publishing companies, and other
organizations. After founding The Freechild Project in
2001 and SoundOut in 2002 he began working with clients
locally, nationally and internationally. He has written
extensively for both websites, developing site
navigation, content, and publications to offer
specifically to their target audiences. Adam has used
social media extensively for Freechild, incorporating
technologies such as Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter and
delicious into the fray. He has designed projects,
written guides, evaluated programs, and provided an
array of public speaking, professional development,
youth training, consulting and technical assistance to
thousands of children, youth and adults since then. He
founded a national nonprofit organization in 2007 that
was focused on youth engaging, serving as the executive
director for two years. Working with a variety of
volunteers and professional partners, Adam obtained
501(c)3 status from the IRS, established a variety of
local, national and international relations, upheld
professional obligations, and secured a variety of
funding supports.
As both a freelance writer and independent author, Adam
has written 100s of publications, including educational
materials, website content, curricula, articles,
training manuals, promotional materials, grant
proposals, monographs, and reports. His most popular
pieces include theFirestarter Youth Empowerment
Curriculum, the Meaningful Student Involvement Guide to
Students as Partners in School Change, the Freechild
Project Guide to Social Change Led By and With Young
People, and the SoundOut Student Voice Curriculum. He
has written publications for the National PTA, the
American Institutes for Research, and Capstone Press, a
children's library publisher. He has also had articles
published in academic journals in the United States and
Australia. Adam maintains a blog at www.youngerworld.org.
Adam's work in the area of school reform has continued
to grow over the last 10 years. After first working in
Lincoln, Nebraska's public schools as a liaison for
refugee students in the mid-90s, Adam rejoined his
efforts in 2001 when he served as the first-ever Student
Engagement Specialist at the Washington State Office of
Superintendent of Public Instruction. There he developed
and led a statewide action research project focused on
engaging students as partners in education
decision-making in state-level administrative processes
and school improvement planning. Adam developed an
introductory guide and a website for the state, as well.
After completing his bachelor's degree focused on
critical pedagogy, youth studies and community
development at The Evergreen State College, in 2006 he
began his graduate studies in Educational Leadership and
Policy Studies at the University of Washington College
of Education.
As the Coordinated School Health Manager at the
Washington State Department of Health between 2008 and
2010, Adam served as a liaison between the DOH and the
state education agency, facilitating interagency
collaboration focused on an array of school health
issues. The agency's lead school health policy analyst,
he led agency-wide reviews of state and federal
legislation and rule-making. Adam's budget management
activities, supported by an interagency agreement funded
with a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant,
included interagency agreements and external contracts,
negotiations, sub-contracts, federal reports, program
deliverables and evaluation. After co-founding the
Washington State Coordinated School Health Network, he
led professional development, technical assistance, and
information-sharing activities for a variety of partners
in K-12 schools, districts, within state agencies and at
local health departments across Washington. He also
co-coordinated of the Washington Youth School Health
Cadre, served as the co-chair of Washington Action for
Healthy Kids, and coordinated Washington Students Taking
Charge, a student-driven school health improvement
program working in several schools across the state.
Adam served several terms of community and national
service. In 2000 he participated in a fellowship program
for the Points of Light Foundation and was the Youth
Engaged in Service Ambassador for Washington State. His
terms as an AmeriCorps Member included an individual
placement running a ropes challenge course on the Hood
Canal for the Washington Service Corps out of Tacoma,
Washington and as an AmeriCorps Member with the Changing
Trends AmeriCorps Program in Lincoln, Nebraska. In that
term he created a tutoring and mentoring program for
Kurdish and Iraqi refugee students. Adam's service in
AmeriCorps ended with a term as an AmeriCorps Leader
with the Corporation for National Service, during which
he worked with the Rocky Mountain Youth Corps in Taos,
New Mexico.
Outdoor education, team building, and experiential
learning were a major area of emphasis early in Adam's
career. His first work as a ropes challenge course
director was for Boy Scout Camp Cornhusker in DuBois,
Nebraska in 1996. For two years he worked as a
Teacher/Naturalist at Pioneer Park Nature Center in
Lincoln, Nebraska from 1996 to 1998. Adam was a Ropes
Challenge Course Director Certification Instructor at
the National Camping School in Spokane, Washington in
1998, and operated the COPE Course at Camp Hahobas in
Belfair, Washington, for two years. He directed summer
nature programs at Camp Cedars in Fremont, Nebraska, and
Camp Kitaki in Louisville, Nebraska prior to that.
An early adapter of social media, Adam has delved in
usage of the Internet as an organizing tool since the
mid-1990s. Today Adam has a reputation for capturing a
significant audience throughout the arenas of youth
work, school reform, and community engagement by using
variety of platforms to reach a large international
audience. Today he coaches a variety of clients and
collaborators on how to use social media successfully to
reach out to young people and adults.
Other youth work Adam has done has included operating a
youth center for the City of Tumwater, Washington, in
1998 and 1999. From 1995 to 1997 he worked as an
Independent Living Skills Instructor for the YWCA in
Lincoln, Nebraska. He was a Teen Floor Attendant for a
drug treatment facility operated by CentrePointe, Inc.
in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Adam has served a number of organizations as a committed
volunteer and activist. He served as an advisor for the
Olympia parks and recreation department, and for a local
nonprofit organization called Partners in Prevention
Education in Olympia, Washington. After 10 years of
service to the National Youth Rights Association, Adam
was named a director emeritus in 2009, and am a founding
advisor of the Institute for Democratic Education in
America. He am a contributing editor to the Review of
Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, an academic
journal. He is also a board member for Kijana Voices,
and serve as an advisor to the Patchwork School in
Colorado. Adam has also been a volunteer teacher at the
Olympia Free School and tabled for the Nebraskans for
Peace Alternatives to the Military committee.
|
|
