Source-led field guide

Build the conditions where positive deviants can emerge.

Positively Devious is a practical resource hub for people designing youth, community and place-based work. It explains the frameworks behind positive deviance, youth power, trusted relationships, civic action, learning and systems change — clearly, carefully and with attribution.

Explore 28 frameworksStart with the field guideChoose a framework

First-day authority foundation

A hub built to answer the real questions practitioners ask.

Most youth and community projects do not need one more vague slogan. They need clear language, usable frameworks, honest limits and practical questions that help people act. This site starts by organising the field: what positive deviance means, how youth voice avoids tokenism, how trusted adults support growth, how social action becomes civic power, and how local systems can learn from what already works.

Positioning: Positively Devious is developing a distinctive synthesis. The public foundation is deliberately source-led first: cite the field, explain the field, then build responsibly from it.

Framework clusters

The map of the field.

Cluster

Youth Work and Youth Development

Frameworks about youth work values, developmental practice, social education, youth development and young people's agency.

Featured starting points

Six frameworks that hold the centre.

Positive Deviance Approach

A strengths-based approach that looks for people or groups already achieving unusually good outcomes despite facing similar constraints to others.

Source: Positive Deviance Collaborative

Hart's Ladder of Participation

A model for thinking about different levels of children and young people's participation, from tokenism through to shared decision-making.

Source: Roger Hart / UNICEF Innocenti Essay

Lundy Model of Child Participation

A rights-based model built around space, voice, audience and influence, helping organisations make participation meaningful.

Source: Laura Lundy / Queen's University Belfast

Developmental Relationships Framework

A framework for the relationships young people need to express care, challenge growth, provide support, share power and expand possibilities.

Source: Search Institute

Theory of Change

A planning and evaluation approach that maps how activities are expected to contribute to outcomes and longer-term change.

Source: Center for Theory of Change

Collective Impact

A collaboration approach for cross-sector work around a common agenda, shared measurement, mutually reinforcing activity, communication and backbone support.

Source: Stanford Social Innovation Review

Guides

Plain-English explainers

Use guides when you need the meaning, practical implications and common mistakes behind a concept.

Browse guides

Compare

Choose between frameworks

Comparison pages show when to use one model, when to combine models, and what each lens misses.

Compare frameworks

Tools

Turn ideas into practice

Checklists and templates help teams apply the library without pretending the work is simpler than it is.

Use tools

Emerging support areas

These service pages describe careful, partner-shaped support areas. They are not presented as finished products or guaranteed outcomes.

Positive Deviance AuditYouth Voice AuditYouth Board in a BoxPositive Deviant AcademyTrusted Adult TrainingYouth Leadership Programme DesignYouth Ecosystem Mapping