Extension faculty and staff are constantly planning, implementing, and evaluating programming efforts. Data from participants are needed for assessing changes in knowledge, attitude, and behavior through summative and formative evaluation. However, collecting these data can be time-consuming and hard to achieve. A technological tool called…

Action learning is a practical and high-impact way to enhance staff development within an organization. With action learning, participants are invited to own their learning experience by weaving personal experience, individual professional needs, and developmental training into a concentrated focus. In Extension, it is vital to offer tangible…

Extension educators often seek new strategies for engaging minority youths in 4-H programs, especially young Black males. These strategies require programming developed in response to the context of this population. We offer insights into the social context of Black males and offer suggestions that will help educators develop identity and…

Population decline, outmigration of youths, and dwindling job prospects have challenged the vitality of rural economies in the United States for decades. Previous rural youth programs have been criticized for failing to address the social underpinnings of flight, attend to the unique features of rural contexts, and encourage youths to develop a…

While the basic foundations of organizational and coaching strategies are very important to the development of a youth sports team, it is imperative to expand further on what makes a true team. A great team is not created overnight, it usually takes several years. Yet, with the proper mindset, the right coach can quickly turn a youth program into…

This report explores the writing enjoyment, behaviours and attitudes of 8 to 11-year-olds in the UK in the 2017/18 academic year. It supports the launch of author and National Literacy Trust ambassador Cressida Cowell's Free Writing Friday initiative; a new campaign designed to encourage primary school children to write for pleasure. In this…

Federal law mandates that transition plans and services be in effect for students with disabilities by the time they turn 16, in order to optimize students' successful movement from high school into postsecondary areas including postsecondary education, competitive employment, independent living, and community participation. Despite currently…

Background: Gay-straight alliances (GSAs) have potential to facilitate conversations on transgender and gender-diversity issues among members. We examined how frequently GSA members discussed transgender and gender-diversity topics within GSAs, whether GSAs varied from one another in the extent to which these conversations occurred, and identified…

Culturally grounded therapeutic services orchestrated to meet the needs of African American youth remain sparse. The authors address this gap in the areas of scholarship and clinical practice by detailing Future 4 Teens (F4T), an integrated community therapy and education service model targeting African American youth ages 12-21 years old. Based…

Make a Difference (MAD) is a sustainability leadership program for high school students in Auckland, New Zealand. It offers a residential camp and follow-up activities. This article documents a participatory, utilization-focused evaluation of MAD, based on a Theory of Change approach. We ran workshops with MAD coordinators and students and…

The purpose of the Delphi study described in this article was to determine barriers, challenges, and alternatives related to planning and implementing 4-H international visitor exchange programs. The Delphi panel comprised 21 Extension agents selected from two southeastern states on the basis of their experience and/or interest in international…

In 2014, The Atlantic Philanthropies awarded two grants totaling $21 million to agencies charged with working together to support and expand health career pathways for high school students in Oakland. Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) and the Alameda County Health Care Services Agency (ACHCSA) received a grant of $11 million, and the Alameda…

This study compared four horseless and seven traditional horse participants from Washington County 4-H in Utah for horse knowledge gained and for the development of 10 life skills from Hendricks's Targeting Life Skills Model: leadership, teamwork, self-responsibility, personal safety, problem-solving, decision-making, critical thinking, goal…

Youth-Creative Action Research (Y-CAR) is a variant of participatory action research specifically suited for exploring and developing evidence-informed innovations to address complex social challenges such as climate change. In this paper, we present an overview of Y-CAR and explore its core defining features, potential for application in research…

In this paper, we present a framework to examine the kinds of careers that rural disadvantaged youth would like to know about in a career guidance intervention as also related findings from two different rural disadvantaged contexts in India. Differences across gender, age group, region, and participation/non-participation in youth programmes are…