Adults must continually learn to navigate the challenges of society and the job market. This lifelong learning is vital, particularly for vulnerable adults, and should be fostered in their living and working environment. In this article, we present a literature review exploring the conditions of conducive learning environments at meso-level, being…

The Drug-Free Communities (DFC) Support Program aims to reduce youth substance use by fostering multi-sector collaboration and implementing locally tailored strategies within the community. This study is among the first to evaluate the program's impact on youth development outcomes in the United States. Using the Callaway and Sant'Anna (2021)…

While research abounds on the outcomes of out-of-school time programs for youth, most studies focus on programs with similar profiles or within the same program category, leaving a notable gap in examining youth experiences across programs with different delivery modes. The current research investigated the perceived experiences of youth in two…

The foremost index of caregiving quality is child attachment, as supported by attachment theory. Research supports the relevance of early parenting interventions in improving child outcomes in attachment quality to promote public health because of their long-term effects on mental health and functioning. This study aimed at evaluating the impact…

Promise programs have grown in popularity as a way to provide college tuition/fees and other student supports in the hopes of increasing college access and success. This chapter presents results from a comprehensive mixed-methods evaluation of the Lake Tahoe Community College Promise Program. Using rich administrative data and interviews with…

For many years, those who work in the mentoring field have wondered how they can extend the impact of their programs beyond the benefits experienced by young people they serve. There has been an increasing desire within our field to harness the power of mentoring to enable the youth served in a program to not just grow individually, but to…

Community-engaged approaches to addressing mental health concerns have reduced health inequities experienced by refugee communities. Problem Management Plus (PM+)--a brief psychological intervention developed by the World Health Organization--has shown effectiveness in improving mental health and well-being of adults experiencing distress. This…

This paper explores the external developmental assets and how they manifest in specific youth programs from Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras. An evaluation process was created through a qualitative phenomenological with the youth programs' leadership. To triangulate the data, a survey was developed and piloted with a small sample from three youth…

Background: School-based COVID-19 testing is a potential strategy to limit COVID-19 transmission among youth in congregate settings such as schools, sports programs, and summer camps. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of frequent rapid antigen testing at a supervised distance-learning setting for elementary…

This report evaluates the Institute of Museum and Library Services' (IMLS) four grant programs specifically designed to support library and museum services in Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian (Kanaka Maoli) communities. Conducted by a combination of Kituwah Services, LLC (Kituwah Services), ICF, and IMLS, the evaluation examined…

Objective: In this paper, we describe an approach to engage young children in evaluating the impact of "La Vida Buena," a community health worker-led childhood obesity intervention for Latino children aged 5-8 years. Design: This paper describes the collaborative process used to pilot, refine, implement and evaluate evaluation…

Parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) frequently report high levels of stress related to the process of receiving an ASD diagnosis and navigating the intervention landscape. Parent education programs offer one approach to providing families with support, information, and resources following a child's diagnosis. Given the…

The Global Resilience Oral Workshops (GROW) Free and Strong programs take a strengths-based, positive youth development (PYD) approach to promoting thriving. Through both prevention (GROW Strong) and intervention (GROW Free) exercises, these programs aim to build character and emotional resilience while also lowering unhealthy alcohol use. To…

As low-income youth of color seek to persevere and succeed against the odds, afterschool programs have become a growing resource and support for many of these low-income youth and their families. However, the body of research concerning the impact of afterschool programs is largely inconclusive and there is still a growing urgency to determine the…

The purpose of this study was to explore potential effects of a 12-week therapeutic mentoring program targeting social, emotional, and behavioral concerns in 52 children and adolescents between 11 and 17 years of age. Self-reported scores on a norm-referenced behavioral questionnaire were tracked across the span of a mentoring program, and then…