Not another training. A 12-week co-design process — built with youth, guided by youth perspective — to create the tools, practices, and models that shift how adults and organizations show up for young people in Greater Cincinnati.
Our region has invested deeply in training. Across Greater Cincinnati, adults have access to learning experiences focused on trauma-informed care, youth development, and mental health.
This work matters. It has laid critical groundwork.
And still, young people continue to say they do not consistently experience safe and trusted adults in their lives.
The gap is not information. It is practice, presence, and relational culture — the distance between what adults believe and how they show up when it matters most.
The Design Lab is not here to replace existing work. It is here to deepen it.
This is a space to slow down, reflect, and build the conditions that allow everything else to land differently — where learning becomes practice, and intention becomes consistency.
You cannot just bring youth into a room. There is preparation that happens before anyone arrives.
There is emotional labor that runs underneath every session. There are agendas that get reshaped in real time. There is follow-up, care, and moments where slowing down is the most important move.
Presence is sometimes more important than progress. This is what that means in practice.
"You cannot rush trust. You cannot shortcut belonging. And you cannot design youth-centered systems from the outside in."
Youth and adults enter the space and build trust with each other first. Before any tools are designed, the room becomes a community — with shared agreements, genuine relationships, and a common understanding of why this work matters.
Youth LabYouth share their definitions of safe adults and safe spaces directly with the adult SME participants. Adults bring their organizational expertise. Together, the group begins to frame what the tools need to do and who they need to reach.
Youth Lab + SME LabThe real work happens here. Youth and subject matter experts work side by side to build content, test language, refine frameworks, and push back on anything that doesn't ring true. Youth are not consultants — they are co-authors.
SME LabDrafts go back to the Youth Lab for honest feedback. What lands? What doesn't? What would actually help an adult in a hard moment with a young person? The tools get sharper with every pass.
Youth LabThe finished tools are presented to HEY! leadership and the C&C Working Group. Youth are recognized for their leadership. And the question the whole process has been building toward: how do we scale this?
Full cohortThe Design Lab brings youth and adults into a shared process — where youth perspective grounds the work, and adults contribute experience, resources, and implementation pathways.
This is not about youth advising from the margins. And it is not about adults leading alone.
It is a co-designed process where both are necessary — and neither works without the other.
A space rooted in youth voice and lived experience. Young people shape the direction, challenge assumptions, and ensure the work stays connected to what is real.
This is where the foundation of the Design Lab begins.
A cross-sector group of practitioners, leaders, and community members working alongside youth to build, test, and refine tools in real time.
This work extends beyond sessions — including reflection, iteration, and collaboration between convenings.
This work is being shaped by partners across Greater Cincinnati, including:
The Design Lab produces two living deliverables — not finished products to be shelved, but tools designed to be used, tested, refined, and built upon by communities across the region.
A youth-led introductory training experience — not a certification, not a checklist. Centered on observable behavior change: how adults show up in hard moments, how they share power, how they build trust with young people over time. Written in youth language, grounded in youth-defined definitions of safety, and designed to be delivered by youth.
A multi-organization learning journey — where groups of organizations go through a transformation process together, with youth at every stage. Not a workshop. Not a training day. A sustained commitment to shifting organizational culture, mental models, and practice in community with others who are also trying.
Photos and documentation from the Design Lab sessions — uploading as the process unfolds.
The tools this lab produces are outputs. The outcomes we are working toward are human — and they take time to see. Here is what we are actually trying to change.
More youth in Greater Cincinnati experience adults who are present, consistent, and genuinely committed. More youth feel they belong in spaces in their community.
Adults who go through this experience practice differently. They show up differently in hard moments. They hold themselves accountable to youth-defined standards.
Organizations move up the Ladder of Youth Participation — building youth-centered practices into how they operate, not just how they talk about themselves.
Greater Cincinnati develops a community of practice — a shared vocabulary, shared tools, and shared accountability that doesn't disappear when a grant cycle ends.
The Design Lab is not a one-time investment with a final deliverable. It is the beginning of a living infrastructure — one that gets stronger as more organizations practice, reflect, and build the muscle of relational, youth-centered culture together. This requires funders and partners willing to commit to a journey, not just a product.
Not a finished reflection. This is what's emerging in real time — from youth, from adults, and from the space in between.
These are not accusations. They are questions the work keeps asking — of systems, of organizations, of all of us trying to do this with integrity.
What does real power-sharing look like — and how do we know when we're actually doing it versus performing it?
Are our timelines aligned with trust, or with funding cycles? What would we change if we were honest about that?
Are we creating space for reflection — or are we moving too fast to learn from what we're doing?
Who decides what success looks like in this work? And whose absence from that conversation matters most?
What are we asking youth to carry that adults should be carrying instead?