Positive Youth Development

Transitions of Truants: Community Truancy Board as a Turning Point in the Lives of Adolescents

by Kevin Wright

Johnson, Charles L, Kevin A. Wright, and Paul S. Strand (2012). "Transitions of Truants: Community Truancy Board as a Turning Point in the Lives of Adolescents." Journal of Juvenile Justice, 1(2), 34-51.

School dropout represents a major turning point in a person’s life that could be seen as an initial step on a... more School dropout represents a major turning point in a person’s life that could be seen as an initial step on a difficult pathway to reduced conventional opportunities. The challenge is to identify interventions that can successfully reintegrate students back into a school setting in a manner that encourages continued attendance and involvement. One such program is the West Valley Community Truancy Board in Spokane, Washington. In addition to the truancy board process, the program employs a court-appointed officer to mentor students and manage the overall process of identifying and attending to the risks and needs that promote truancy. Guided by Sampson and Laub’s (1993) age-graded theory of informal social control and Cullen’s (1994) application of social support to delinquency, the current analysis seeks to determine the overall effectiveness of the truancy board based on both quantitative analyses of outcomes and qualitative interviews with key actors. We discuss the implications for the ongoing theoretical, empirical, and policy debates surrounding truancy intervention.

‘Hope’ for children and youth in a challenging world?

by Penny Moore

Business of Drugs: poverty relief or tenaciously snap our society???

by Suman Chowdhury Mony

Businessman especially the producer, manufacturer, seller of deathly drugs, should realize that it will be too much... more Businessman especially the producer, manufacturer, seller of deathly drugs, should realize that it will be too much harmful for their children and family members who are live in the danger point being drug addicted. Their profitable business can push their family members, friends and relatives in the deathly circle of drugs. In these days, they enjoy their super profitable business of harmful drugs by destroying our several ages people specially youths, but are they think about their families? How they protect their family members, friends and relatives when they are in the mine of harmful drugs, which are easy to get to them?

"Facilitating Sustainable Change" Solomon Islands Youth Project - A Concept Paper

by alexis stergakis

Alexis Stergakis Co - Authored with Ikarini Wulundari, Rebecca Smith, Azlan Petra, Jacqueline Lim

A concept paper sets forth to shape a project to be re-engage with the Temotu region as a starting point for... more A concept paper sets forth to shape a project to be re-engage with the Temotu region as a starting point for addressing assumed key issues around youth and sustainable agriculture. We aim to facilitate discussions with community groups, which are targeted towards the people of Temotu working together to find solutions for the issues in their own region.

This projects overarching objective is to provide a forum for community members to practice community mobilisation and facilitation of their own discussions through the rhetoric of agricultural sustainability.

the Mosaic Model for Youth Development through the Arts

by Lorraine Gutierrez

Call2_Project Rendering the Real

by Sireita Mullings

Project Rendering the Real, is calling for participants for an interactive symposium and exhibition by project titled the “Fourth Moment”.

March 22nd – April 27th 2012.

www.renderingthereal.com

The intention is to interrogate the visual representations of art practitioners and their project participants, by way... more The intention is to interrogate the visual representations of art practitioners and their project participants, by way of papers, presentations, workshops and artwork.

The exhibition and symposium will run between
March 22nd – April 27th 2012.

Visit www.renderingthereal.com for more information.

A Note on Youth Unemployment in the EU

by Francesco Pastore

Co-authored paper with F.E. Caroleo,
Annals of the University of Petroşani, 27, 7(1): 37-52.

This short note aims to provide a theoretical framework to think of the youth unemployment problem and a... more This short note aims to provide a theoretical framework to think of the youth unemployment problem and a classification of EU countries according to the way they address it. The key factor to explain youth unemployment is what we call the youth experience gap. To help young people to fill their experience gap and smooth school-to-work transitions every country provides a mix of policy instruments, including different degrees and types of labour market flexibility, of educational and training systems, of passive income support schemes and fiscal incentives. Five different country groups are detected whose outcomes in terms of youth unemployment are dramatically different: a) the North-European; b) the Continental European; c) the Anglo-Saxon; d) the South-European; e) new member states. The Lisbon strategy provides well-targeted guidelines, but is costly and hard to implement.

An Evaluation of the Southeast Austin Community Youth Development Program

by Texas State PA Applied Research Projects

Darrington, Patti, "An Evaluation of the Southeast Austin Community Youth Development Program" (2001). Applied Research Projects, Texas State University-San Marcos. Paper 159.
http://ecommons.txstate.edu/arp/159

The purpose of this research is explore the effectiveness of the Community Youth Development (CYD) program to reduce... more The purpose of this research is explore the effectiveness of the Community Youth Development (CYD) program to reduce juvenile crime and have a positive impact on targeted communities. The CYD Program is the responsibility of the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services (PRS). In 1995, the 74th Texas Legislature created the Community Youth Development (CYD) Program to address juvenile crime. The goal of the program is to decrease the incidence of juvenile crime in Texas.

Research methodologies to explore the working hypotheses consisted of comparative case study and field research. First, the comparative case study allowed the comparison of the two zip code areas (CYD local area and comparison local area), to determine the effect of the Community Youth Development (CYD) Program in the targeted community. Second, the field research tested the impact of CYD in the targeted community through open-ended interviews, direct observations, and a focus group.

Although the evidence reviewed does not clearly indicate the impact of the program on juvenile crime, the Southeast Austin Community Youth Development Program has community support. The program is definitely meeting the needs of the youth for extracurricular activities. Children and families are afforded opportunities and resources within the 78744 community that were not present prior to the implementation of the program. Although many of the individuals interviewed for this study admitted they do not know the impact the CYD Program has had on juvenile crime in the community, they believe the program has had a positive impact in the community. Although preliminary evidence did not show the clear impact of the program in meeting the goal of reducing juvenile crime, the Southeast Austin Community Youth Development Program is certainly meeting many of the needs of the targeted community.

Street Ball, Swim Team and the Sour Cream Machine: A Cluster Analysis of Out of School Time Participation Portfolios

by Billie Gastic, Ph.D.

Co-authored with Ingrid Nelson (Stanford University)

Adolescents spend only a fraction of their waking hours in school and what they do with the rest of their time varies... more Adolescents spend only a fraction of their waking hours in school and what they do with the rest of their time varies dramatically. Despite this, research on out-of-school time has largely focused on structured programming. The authors analyzed data from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002) to examine the out-of-school time activity portfolios of 6,338 high school sophomores, accounting for time spent in school clubs and sports as well as 17 other activities. The analytical sample was balanced with respect to sex and racially and ethnically diverse: 49% female, 67% White, 10% Latino, 10% African American, and 6% Asian and Pacific Islander. Approximately 76% of the sample attended public schools, 30% were in the highest socioeconomic quartile, and 20% were in the lowest socioeconomic quartile. The authors identified five distinct out-of-school time activity portfolios based on a cluster analysis. The demographic profiles of students by portfolio type differed significantly with respect to sex, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, school type and location. Students by portfolio type also differed significantly in terms of measures of academic success, school behavior, victimization and perceptions of school climate, controlling for covariates. These findings underscore the importance of more complex considerations of adolescents’ out-of-school time.

Youth of India and Politics of Liminality

by dev pathak

Do Lessons In Happiness Work? Happiness Among the Dutch Secondary School Students: Using the Yesterday's Diary

by Maja Tadic

Tadic, Maja; Braam, Huub; Van Vliet, Katja; Veenhoven, Ruut.
5th European Conference on Positive Psychology, Copenhagen, Denmark, 23-26.06. 2010

The purpose of this study is to assess the effects of lessons in happiness in a secondary school setting, and argue... more The purpose of this study is to assess the effects of lessons in happiness in a secondary school setting, and argue that measures of happiness obtained through diary methods are appropriate in that context. Traditional measures of happiness mostly rely on global evaluations of life. However, research shows that is a complex cognitive task, often accomplished by consulting heuristics and susceptible to various biases. In contrast, assessments collected in real time or linked to diaries have the advantage of connecting happiness and time-use, as well as decreasing memory bias, achieved by minimizing the amount of time between an experience and the report of that experience. In the context of adolescence, another limitation of the measures that reflect cognitive appraisal of life is that many youngsters have not yet developed a clear view on the quality of their life. Further on, in the framework of intervention evaluation, another potential drawback of focusing on cognition is a positive bias, resulting from the course teaching people to think in a more positive way, while they may still feel unhappy. In that context, measurement of the intervention effect in this study was focused more on the affective component of happiness, namely, the hedonic level of affect. The data was collected in 2009, among secondary school pupils in the Netherlands (average age M=13.48, SD=1.16). The pupils used an internet application diary based on the Day Reconstruction Method (Kahneman et al., 2004), before, during and 6 months after the lessons in happiness, in which they systematically reconstructed the previous day, dividing the day into activities in chronological order and rating the mood for each of the listed activities on a one-item graphical scale. This specific application used (Veenhoven, Vermeulen & Hermus 2005) can be obtained at RISBO, a research institute at the Erasmus University Rotterdam.

The Effects of a Positive Youth Development Intervention on Problem Behavior Outcomes

by Vanessa Madrazo

Master's Thesis, Defended Summer 2011

This study reported an Outcome Mediation Cascade evaluation of the Changing Lives Program (CLP), a positive youth... more This study reported an Outcome Mediation Cascade evaluation of the Changing Lives Program (CLP), a positive youth intervention. This study examined the effects of participation in the CLP on positive outcomes (Personal Expressiveness and Well-Being) and negative outcomes (Internalizing and Externalizing problem behaviors) as mediated by Identity Distress. 137 females and 101 males comprised the sample of this study, which draws from archival data of adolescents in alternative high schools in Miami. Findings indicated that the hypothesized model fit the data (χ2 (11) = 14.544, p = .020;
RMSEA = .04; CFI = .995; SRMR = .028). Findings also provided preliminary evidence consistent with the hypothesis that in addition to having effects on targeted positive
outcomes, PYD interventions are likely to have progressive cascading effects on untargeted problem outcomes.

Societal images of youth: representations and interpretations by youth actively engaged in their communities

by Louise Jennings

Toward a critical social theory of youth empowerment

by Louise Jennings

Participative research to create a youth local plan and sustainable structure of young people participation in a local community (2008)

by Xavier Úcar

• SEGARRA, J.; ÚCAR, X. (2008) “Participative research to create a youth local plan and sustainable structure of young people participation in a local community”, pp. 249-257 en JAKOB, M.C.; REICHMUT, J.  Community development: Local and global challenges. Luzern: Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and arts-Social Work. (ISBN: 978-3-906413-55-6)

Leaders Building Leadership in Honduras and Syria with Faith-based and Secular Youth-focused Non-Governmental Organizations

by Ernest Gard

This work compares two young organizations, Bidna Capoeira and UrbanPromise Honduras, on the basis of their core... more This work compares two young organizations, Bidna Capoeira and UrbanPromise Honduras, on the basis of their core values, faith-based or secular status and, finally, their different leadership styles. Both organizations engage youth with programs that aim to develop community. Bidna Capoeira provides sport, music and martial arts instruction as a form of psychosocial therapy to refugee youth in the Middle East. UrbanPromise Honduras provides after school tutoring and educational programs to children using local teenagers as instructors. Recommendations include best practices for organizational management and youth leadership development based on the strengths and weaknesses of transformational and transactional leadership styles in the executive staff of both organizations.