“A bond as strong as a lock and chain”: Youth of color in low-income communities use photovoice to theorize developmentally nurturing processes of their cross-age mentoring programs.

Youth of color experiencing low-income in the United States face multiple human rights violations: overpolicing, community violence, racial discrimination, and insufficient voice in the programs and policies that impact their current and future lives. To accomplish transitional justice, participatory processes are needed that elicit youths' cultural strengths and wisdom about themselves, their social conditions, services they find helpful, and why those services are helpful. This study highlights findings from a photovoice that elicited youths' perspectives about a cross-age mentoring out-of-school-program. Responding to "What does mentoring mean to you?" 147 youth took photographs in their communities and wrote narratives about the photographs' meanings. The research team, including youth coresearchers, conducted a thematic and content analysis of the participants' narratives. Youth were highly articulate about the specific program elements that would uplift their peers, and why those elements are impactful. Through qualitative analysis of youths' photographs and narratives, this study reveals the youths' "folk theories" about their program's mechanism of action. Youth described mentoring as a nurturing family, friendship, community, care, love, acceptance, trust, communication, and vulnerability. They thoughtfully described culturally relevant "folk theories" of how cross-age mentoring fosters children's development, counteracting stressful high-burden contexts. Analyzing youths' metaphors for the nurturing process in cross-age mentoring indicated how much they valued caring for each other, creativity, and supporting positive life trajectories for each other while overcoming poverty and discrimination. When offered opportunities for creative self-expression such as photovoice, youth can be insightful partners in resisting the downward pull of human rights violations and theorize interventions and nurturing processes that develop their resilience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).