We are delighted to have received a multi-year award from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to explore the broader impacts of youth engagement in communities. Most projects on youth voice document the outcomes on the youth themselves, but far fewer study how communities are impacted when young people are included. We believe this is key to socializing and normalizing more inter-generational conversations and collaborations, allowing communities to benefit from diverse lived experiences and perspectives. We are collaborating with the National Girls Collaborative and the University of Washington to address this gap in knowledge by conducting a study of programs operating at the intersection of afterschool STEM learning, youth leadership, and community engagement. Public Profit will be our evaluator. The team will examine not only the programs' impact on young people but also how community issues were addressed and the extent to which the community was affected by youth participation. As a research-to-practice project, our goals are to (1) document the broader systemic impact(s) of youth involvement; (2) design a documentation framework that programs can use to capture these broader impacts; and (3) identify the commonalities and support structures programs need to achieve these impacts. We are excited to go on this journey and look forward to sharing our findings with you as we go along.
We are delighted to have received a multi-year award from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to explore the broader impacts of youth engagement in communities. Most projects on youth voice document the outcomes on the youth themselves, but far fewer study how communities are impacted when young people are included. We believe this is key to socializing and normalizing more inter-generational conversations and collaborations, allowing communities to benefit from diverse lived experiences and perspectives. We are collaborating with the National Girls Collaborative and the University of Washington to address this gap in knowledge by conducting a study of programs operating at the intersection of afterschool STEM learning, youth leadership, and community engagement. Public Profit will be our evaluator. The team will examine not only the programs' impact on young people but also how community issues were addressed and the extent to which the community was affected by youth participation. As a research-to-practice project, our goals are to (1) document the broader systemic impact(s) of youth involvement; (2) design a documentation framework that programs can use to capture these broader impacts; and (3) identify the commonalities and support structures programs need to achieve these impacts. We are excited to go on this journey and look forward to sharing our findings with you as we go along.
We launched CYESS with a study conducted in Fall 2023 to examine how afterschool and OST programs are approaching the intersection of youth leadership and community engagement with STEM. Our report described our findings from our survey and interviews along with recommendations for what we need to amplify and scale such approaches. We also developed a database that lets you search by program type so you can dig in more—check out the dashboard! This is a live and dynamic database, so if your program should be included and add to our knowledge base, click on the "Add your information" button below!