In Section 1: Management, you learned that creating a portfolio is a collaborative process that can be a great way for program staff members and youth to document their experience in the program. The primary purpose of a portfolio is to allow a young person to showcase his or her program experiences and successes and to enable program staff members to monitor and support youth by understanding their work, their interests, and their lives outside of the program. Young people should be the primary drivers of constructing their portfolios, and the process should help to develop bonds between youth and staff.
Directions: This tool suggests a variety of information that you might want to include in youth portfolios. You can easily start with basic demographic information gathered at enrollment and then add more over time. Youth and program staff members should update portfolios with notes regarding participant accomplishments, areas of interest, participant and family surveys, interest inventories, and other work products described below. You may not want or be able to collect all the information right away; youth and staff members should actively gather information for different sections of the portfolio over time. Creating a portfolio should be a joint effort between the young person and staff members. There is no correct format for a portfolio. You may just have manila folders or binders that you add to over the course of the year with photos, printouts, report cards, reflections, surveys, and other materials. Alternatively, you may have something more extensive and organized that includes different sections and that formally captures data; it could even be electronic. The format you choose will depend on how much time you have to dedicate to this and how you anticipate using the portfolio throughout the year. Whatever your format, remember that your portfolios contain a great deal of confidential information and that they should be kept in a safe place, preferably in a locked drawer or a password-protected file on a computer.