Deborah Young
Deborah Young, Ed.S. Ph.D. is a Professor, Senior Researcher, and Executive Director of Empowering Communities Globally: For the Care of Children. Deborah has been involved in human rights and social/ecological justice with a focus on education and early childhood issues for over 35 years. Her work focuses on refugees and immigrants; gender discrimination and empowerment; and parents and children who have been impacted by ACES. Her work in early childhood, teacher education programs, community led participatory action research, and maternal/newborn child health has embodied community led formal and nonformal education programs, government health system strengthening, service delivery innovations, and quality improvement. She has lived and worked in Central America, East Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East providing technical assistance for quality and inclusive systemic change. She has co-developed the 5-Step Empowering Communities community development model in partnership with the community members she works with. This model is founded in participatory action research, change theory methodologies, informed by raciolinguistics, contemplative critical pedagogy, and decolonizing frameworks.