The author is a site manager employed by a small community-based organization (CBO) that provides afterschool programming at a number of school-based sites scattered throughout southern King County in Washington State. As such, he belongs to one-half of the afterschool youth development (AYD) workforce: the (for the most part) full-time, salaried…

In this paper, the authors examine what it means to become a community science expert (CSE) and why this goal is important for youth in afterschool environments. Using "Green Energy Technology in the City" (GET City) as a case study, they describe how this afterschool program nurtures youth as CSEs. They draw on data gathered in…

Over the next 20 years, experts predict that the number of Latina/o children in the U.S. will double, so that by the year 2025, one in four school children will be Latina/o (White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans, 1998). Yet the academic achievement of Latina/os lags far behind that of other ethnic and racial…

This article grew out of a participatory research project conducted with support of the Robert Bowne Foundation from January 2003 through January 2004. Six young people who had been participants in Forest Hills Community House (FHCH) programs for eight years or longer agreed to be interviewed in depth about experiences that had affected their…

The term "doing hair" is utterly familiar. However, while the term can refer to simple acts of combing, brushing, washing, and styling hair, in the culture of adolescent African-American girls, doing hair is a social practice that represents power, creativity, and sometimes popularity. This article describes a three-month afterschool…