This article describes the first year of a partnership between a university and a community organization working to improve and expand a community-based multigenerational mentoring program for African American adolescent girls ages 12-17. The mentoring program, set in an urban Midwestern city, is a collaboration between university…

Research has shown that an idle summer is not just boring; it can cost a student as much as two to three months of educational progress. Summer is critical to each child's development, both mind and body. Any meaningful attempts to get at America's equity divide and the consequent gap in opportunities for kids must include summer education as a…

The Carol M. White Physical Education Program (PEP) provides grants to districts and community-based organizations (CBOs) to initiate, expand, and improve physical education for students in kindergarten through grade 12. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Education issued new regulations for PEP that included the following: (1) requiring grantees to…

American youths are becoming increasingly less physically active and have poor nutrition habits. Nationwide, less than one third of students reported achieving the recommended level of physical activity (one hour of exercise per day). In addition, most youths consume less than the recommended daily amounts of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains.…

The Community Science Workshops (CSWs)--with funding from the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation--created a network among the CSW sites in California. The goals of the CSW Network project have been to improve programs, build capacity throughout the Network, and establish new sites. Inverness Research has been…

Few communities have developed successful strategies for attracting large numbers of older youth to their out-of-school-time programs. Older youth are a challenging population to serve programmatically for several reasons: (1) Demanding schedules mean that young people's participation on a regular basis can be challenging; (2) Teens are not…

In response to the escalation of violent crime among youth in Knoxville, Tennessee, two partnerships have been developed by Pellissippi State Technical Community College (PSTCC), a university and the K-12 system in the Greater Knoxville area, and community leaders to provide non-violent alternatives for youth. The first effort, the annual Greater…

Part of the Trout Unlimited program involves the development of cooperative programs to educate youth and their communities about environmental conservation. This handbook provides guidelines for conducting youth education events and information to facilitate the development and implementation of youth education activities with various community…

The goal in this collection of 22 essays is to consider youth policy based on the themes of promoting youth development, building supportive communities, and reforming systems/linking services. These themes arise from the editors' and contributors' belief that policy makers, program planners, practitioners and researchers need to recognize and…

This report presents findings from Phase 1 of an evaluation of the New York City Beacons initiative, a model of school-community-family partnerships initiated in 1991. Beacons are community centers located in public schools, offering a range of activities and services to participants of all ages, before and after school, in the evenings, and on…

Identifying the voluntary activities, programs, and services that children and families use during students' out-of-school time as primary supports, this self-study guide provides a framework for developing primary support programs that allow school-aged children and adolescents to develop physical, cognitive, social, and emotional skills. The…

Historically, land-grant university research stations focused on demonstrating successful farming methods. The land-grant mission and the principles at its foundation have broad applicability, and we believe the land-grant principles can be successfully applied in urban settings to a university's work with youth and families. In this article we…