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Personal Values and Motivations

Grade Level: 
6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
Keywords: 
Addressing Needs
Motivation for Giving
Values
Youth Advisory Committee
What motivates youth to action? Each person has developed personal values and motivations that may drive their decisions and actions. In this activity, young people gain self-awareness as they reflect on what motivates them in school, family, and community settings. They do a card-sorting activity first alone, and then in pairs or a larger group and find where there is alignment with others. This activity may facilitate discussions about how their personal values impact group decisions related to taking voluntary action or making grants. This is a great activity for Youth Advisory Committees (YACs) to go along with a community needs assessment.

Activity by Sara Jacobs-Carter and the Midland Area Community Foundation

Preparation

Time: 10 minutes for personal sorting; 15 minutes for pairs/small groups; 15 minutes for whole group discussion

Materials:

  • one copy (2 pages) for each participant of the Personal Values and Motivation Cards, below
  • scissors to cut apart the cards

TIP: The facilitator should do the activity first before introducing the activity to youth. This raises self-awareness of priorities, issues that may come up for youth, and ideas for discussion prompts that fit the context of the group. It’s a nice check-in for one's own life – when you realize you're spending a lot of time and energy on things that aren’t in your current top 10 (and priorities may change from exercise to exercise). This can help us re-prioritize day-to-day activities. Housework, for example, is nowhere to be found in the cards.

TIP: You may want to choose 15-20 of the cards to shorten the sorting time and then rotate the cards next time to make it a different experience for youth who do it more than once. 

Activity

Introduction: This sorting activity will guide us to reflect on our personal values and motivations. Deciding how you sort won't be easy. There are no right answers, and your choices might change over time. You'll have to think about what each value means in your life and in the context of your community. After 10 minutes of thinking and sorting, we will reflect with others to find where our values align as a group. This will help us make decisions together about what action to take to address community needs. 

On Your Own: Cut apart the cards and prioritize them by how strongly each one motivates your choices. Read each card as an end to the sentence, "I am motivated by..." to decide whether it is true for you. Put them in order of what is most important to you as you think about your values and motivations, the decisions you make every day, your plans for the future, and how you choose to act for the good of the community.

Reflect on whether the top 3-5 in your sorting are the most important values and motivations to you. Is this how you spend your time? What would you like to spend more time doing? Do these values and motivations drive what you do in life?

Small Groups: Meet with others to compare and discuss what the values mean to you. Why did you put them in this order? Why didn't you put them in the same order as others did? Where is there alignment? Listen and respond with respect for the different perspectives we each bring to our work and relationships.

Whole Group: As a council, rank the cards together, reflecting the culture and priorities of the group. Discuss and come to consensus when there is disagreement. This may lead to rich discussion about how our individual values inform our decision making. Sometimes the group has to let go of a value/motivation because your group must adhere to some secular norms or community priorities. Discussion may lead to a discovery that having different values doesn't make someone better or worse. Everyone's lived experience is valid. Talk about how this process can help a group resolve conflicts.

Next Steps

Talk about how this activity impacts the work of the youth group. With this shared language and a way to express feelings about values, it can make decision-making clearer. 

Discuss:

  1. How does this help you think about how you want to present yourself to the world? What is important to you, and how does it determine where you want to put your limited time and energy? Does this list help others (at home, school, and in the community) view you as a young adult? 
  2. Do your values match the values of your family of origin? Do they match your peers? If they are different, where do the values and motivations come from?  How do you find where you have shared interests and ways to move forward?
  3. Have you ever formed a list of values before? Where do you think you might save them, post them, or share them with the world? How will you use them in your own decision-making?
  4. How will the group make decisions about service projects and grantmaking after naming the group priorities and shared interests?
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