Community Programs to Promote Youth Development (2002) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
1 Setting the Stage
1 Setting the Stage
Pages 19-40
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From page 19... ...
They are identified by a vast array of terms after-school programs, youth clubs, youth development programs, or programs during nonschoo! hours or out-of-school time.
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From page 20... ...
Private philanthropic foundations have also rapidly expanded their support of community programs for youth. At the same time, a variety of youth-serving organizations, research institutions, technical assistance organizations, and funders have been working, both together and independently, to create frameworks for thinking about positive youth development (e.g., Public/Private Ventures, Chapin Hall Center for Children, the Academy for Educational Development, the National Collaboration for Youth, the National Youth Development Information Center, and the International Youth Foundation)
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The teachers surveyed singled out the need for after-school programs as critical to helping students with difficulties (Metropolitan Life, 1994~; · In a third survey, children and adolescents reported that they want constructive activities outside school, safe places to go where they can prepare for their future, learn and practice new skills, and spend quality time with caring adults and other children and adolescents (Quinn, 19991. ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT Perhaps more important than the increased interest in and funding of community youth organizations, however, has been the focus of community programs on goals related to positive youth development, as well as the prevention and reduction of problem behavior.
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the paucity of high-quality community programs, especially for youth living in high-risk neighborhoods. Numerous other reports and books have stressed the growing complexity of adolescent development.
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Nearly 90 percent of 10th graders and 75 percent of 8th graders think that alcohol is either "fairly easy" or "very easy" to get (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 1996~. "Rave drugs," such as the synthetic psychoactive drug called ecstasy, have become popular at nightclubs, rock concerts, and late-night parties, particularly in urban and suburban neighborhoods and among white middle-class young adults.
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The idea of "positive youth development programs" has emerged over time as common shorthand for a philosophy asserting that "problem-free is not fully prepared," that remediation and prevention services alone are not enough, and that schools have to be supported and complemented by broader options in the community (Pittman and Irby, 1996; Pittman et al., 2000b)
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High school dropout rates, although still unacceptably large for some population subgroups, are at all-time lows (National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 2001; Ekston et al., 19871. In 1998, the rate for serious violent crimes committed by juveniles had dropped by more than half since 1993 and was the lowest it had been since the first data collection efforts in 1973 (U.S.
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The proportion of young people dropping out without completing high school increases with age and is particularly high among Hispanic youth and adolescents living in poor communities (National Center for Health Statistics, 2000~. Finally, in the most recent comparative international academic achievement tests, U.S.
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Furthermore, rates of sexually transmitted diseases and both HIV and AIDS were alarmingly high among adolescents in general, and particularly high among black and American Indian youth living in poor communities (National Center for Health Statistics, 2000~. In fact, half of all new HIV infections occurred among people under the age of 25, and one-quarter of new infections occurred among people between the ages of 13 and 21 (Kirby, 19981.
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Black and Hispanic youth living in poor communities were the most likely to report these experiences (Blum et al., 2000~. Between July 1992 and Tune 1994, 105 violent deaths occurred on or near school grounds or at school-related events.
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. A variety of factors, including rising child care costs, increased work hours, welfare reform, and the limited availability of good programs may account for the large number of children left alone during nonschoo!
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The communities included in this survey were chosen to represent communities with high crime rates, low rates of school performance, and high unemployment. In another survey, with a more representative sample from across the United States, similar results were found; only 50 percent of the youth in public and alternative schools, surveyed from over 213 different towns and cities across the United States by the Search Institute, spent even 3 hours per week in constructive out-of-school activities (Scales and Leffert, 19991.
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From page 31... ...
They may be called after-school programs, youth programs, youth activities, youth development programs, community programs, extracurricular activities, or programs during out-of-school time or nonschoo! hours.
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At the other end are the large, often national programs that may have many state and local-level franchises, enroll sometimes millions of young people, have large and relatively stable budgets (often including substantial public dollars) , and involve many adults in various capacities ranging from membership on a national board to service as volunteers in a particular program.
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From page 33... ...
In our view, the examination of youth programs operating in schools and taking a positive youth development approach yet are independent of the schools' instructional activities is necessary in order to provide a complete picture of community programs for youth. This is particularly true given the increased movement toward housing community programs for youth in schools and creating collaborations between schools and community-based organizations.
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From page 34... ...
Some community programs and policies for youth target children as young as 8 years old and as old as 21; others identify a subset within this larger range, such as 12 to 15 or 16 to 18. The committee chose the 10 to 18 age range because in our view it covers the most critical years of adolescent development and coincides more or less with the years of secondary school.
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From page 35... ...
Programs focused on prevention or problems are often stereotyped by advocates of a positive youth development perspective as identifying teenagers as collections of specific problems in place or about to happen drug use, early and inappropriate sexual activity, violent behavior, school failure, etc. Such programs often emphasize preventing problem behavior (e.g., reducing teenage drug use)
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One reason cited for the increasing interest in after-school and youth development programs is that the growing presence of women in the
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Finally, we do not pretend that this report offers the definitive or final blueprint for positive youth development. Young people are influenced by a large array of factors, ranging from their family to the complicased world of the Internet and the forces of popular culture.
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Chapter 2 is an overview of adolescent development with attention to developmental issues for youth of different ages. Chapter 3 discusses what constitutes evidence of positive youth development, drawing on empirical studies of well-being and positive developmental outcomes, as well as practical wisdom from leaders in this field about the core human needs and attributes that young people need to develop.
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From page 39... ...
To do this, we map the features of positive developmental settings against a variety of programs that have been studied with nonexperimental evaluation methods and then draw conclusions about the program practices that are linked empirically to positive indicators of adolescent development. Chapter 6 reviews the evidence of effective program practices from experimental evaluations of community programs for youth.
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