What is a Youth Development Program?
Youth development programs hold the philosophy that developing abilities like resilience, self-awareness, resourcefulness, and other attributes help young child navigate into adolescence in healthy ways. There is a fundamental difference between youth development programs and various organized programs that may offer youth activities or strategies to prevent high-risk behaviors.
At the Women and Families Center Before & After School program, children can be creative and express themselves through science, arts, literacy, math and recreation. Our children learn more than homework and studies; they also bond with one another and learn how to socialize and create friends. Many of our students create lasting memories and friendships.
Benefits of a Youth program
- Social and Emotional Learning: Attending high-quality school enrichment programs with regular participation can improve social and emotional competencies, including pro-social behavior, fundamental motivation, better concentration efforts, and a higher sense of self-worth. All growing children and adults gain confidence when they apply information, skills, and approaches to improve healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals.
- Development of personal and social skills: Development of personal and social skills in children’s enrichment classes that features giving positive feelings, higher academic achievement, positive attitude toward school, etc.
- Academic Support: Attending children’s enrichment programs can improve students’ academic performance. Recent studies have found that more than 40% of students attending school enrichment programs have improved their reading and math grades, and children who attended more regularly were more likely for overall improvement.
- School Participation: Attending afterschool programs leads to development in-class participation, more conventional adjustment as growing people advance to the next phase of education.
- Safety: Adult supervision should be a part of every youth development program. Engaging in afterschool programs should have adult supervision, making kids feel safer and supporting them with peers when out of school.
- Supporting Working Families: Working families also benefit from WFC’s afterschool programs that assure that youth have a secure place to go while guardians or parents are at work. Parents and guardians who do not have access to childcare reduce the amount of income to the overall family, decreasing the whole family’s living standard.
- Work-Based Learning: WFC’s after school enrichment programs can present opportunities to develop early exposure to different fields of study and employment.
Contact us for more information on the women and families center youth enrichment and after school program today.
