Putting Kids on the Map

A Youth Wellbeing Report Card for the State Shows California Barely Makes the Grade

In 2010, faculty and staff affiliated with the UC Davis Center for Regional Change, where we work, set out to build maps showing how California’s youth are doing at the community level. We wanted to enable young people to see how their communities fit into the context of opportunities in the state as a whole and advocate for themselves.

This project, called Putting Youth on the Map, reflects several interests articulated by young people and their adult allies with whom we collaborated. First was a need for a holistic measure …