The following reflection is adapted from remarks delivered by Dr. Novien Yarber, Senior Learning Officer at Prebys Foundation, at the release of the Youth Well-Being Report.
In June, Prebys Foundation joined the City of San Diego and San Diego Foundation to release a new Youth Well-being Report, developed by the Policy & Innovation Center. The report offers a data-informed look at how young people across San Diego are doing and where our region has opportunities to respond with greater care, coordination, and accountability.
More than a report
First, I want to acknowledge and thank everyone who contributed to this report and made this moment possible.
To the young people whose experiences and voices are reflected throughout these findings, to the Policy & Innovation Center, the City of San Diego, San Diego Foundation, and all the researchers, practitioners, educators, advocates, and community members who helped bring this work to life: thank you.
What we have before us is more than a report. It is evidence. It is reflection. And perhaps most importantly, it is an invitation.
Spending time with the findings was grounding, for sure. We see meaningful signs of progress — higher high school completion rates (95%), increased college enrollment (64%), high employment (90%), and expanded access to health coverage (97%). Across several indicators, San Diego’s young people are outperforming state and national benchmarks. These are achievements worth celebrating, but in the same breadth, disproportionality across these findings reminds us that our work is far from finished.
What these findings ultimately represent are signals. They are symptoms of larger systems, larger conditions, and larger choices. They remind us that youth well-being, for ALL of San Diego’s youth, does not happen in isolation or by happenstance. It emerges from the interaction of multiple systems and multiple communities.
This report serves exactly as it was intended: a launching point for a data-informed conversation, and action, across our region.
Learning across our youth efforts
At Prebys Foundation, our vision for youth success is that all young people in San Diego have sustained and equitable access to educational and workforce pathways that prepare them for meaningful, future-ready careers.
We envision young people building dignified livelihoods, contributing to a thriving local economy, and leading civically engaged lives with voice, agency, and abundant opportunity.
This vision shows up in the way we invest, listen, and learn alongside community partners.
It is reflected in:
- United for Youth, where 40 cross-sector partners are advancing holistic models of care for foster youth, while intentionally centering youth voice and lived experience as critical measures of effectiveness and long-term success.
- Workforce development efforts that are prioritizing experiential, paid, and exploratory opportunities that equip young people with the skills, credentials, and experiences needed for economic mobility — ensuring they don’t have to choose between earning a paycheck and investing in their future.
- Rooted & Rising, where civic engagement and leadership are not treated as abstract concepts but as opportunities for young people to understand the systems shaping their lives and actively influence those systems for the better.
- Healing Through Arts and Nature, we continue to explore how arts, culture, nature, and human connection can serve as powerful pathways to healing and well-being — not only for young people, but also for the families and communities that support them.
Across each of these efforts, we continue to arrive at a similar lesson: no single organization, sector, or approach can advance youth well-being alone.
It requires all-community solutions.
The questions we should be asking
As we engage these findings, my hope is that we resist the temptation to ask only what is happening to our young people. This report already does an excellent job helping us understand that.
Instead, I hope we ask ourselves a different set of questions:
- How are we, as organizations, sectors, or even individuals, impacting our young people?
- What conditions are we actively creating, whether consciously or unintentionally?
- What overlapping systems might be producing these outcomes?
- How did we get here, and how do we course-correct together?
- And most importantly: what do young people think about this moment?
Beyond resilience
In and beyond the findings of this report, I’ve noticed that conversations about youth often center resilience as the goal. And while the ability to persevere through adversity is admirable – I won’t negate that — I would argue that resilience alone is an insufficient aspiration for San Diegans. We can, and will, go further.
At Prebys Foundation, we’re building intentional habits around how we speak about youth. Language matters, and we’re choosing more of an asset-based frame — one that emphasizes thriving over surviving.
Toward equity rather than disproportionate burden.
Toward belonging rather than isolation.
Toward opportunity rather than adaptation to scarcity.
The question should not be how much adversity young people can withstand. The question should be what kind of community we are building so they do not have to carry disproportionate adversity in the first place.
The work ahead belongs to all of us
While this is certainly not the first effort of its kind, this report reminds us that meaningful progress requires coordinated action across education, economic stability, health, safety, belonging, and civic participation — especially in today’s complex and rapidly evolving landscape.
It reminds us that youth voice is not a programmatic feature. It is strategy.
And it reminds us that meaningful change is a cross-sector responsibility.
The work ahead belongs to all of us.
Prebys Foundation remains committed to San Diego’s youth and will use this report, and subsequent learnings, to deepen our efforts in service of young people across our region.
We invite partners, civic leaders, educators, advocates, families, and young people themselves to spend time with the findings and use them as a starting point for deeper conversation and coordinated action.
