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Understanding and identifying the professional development needs of 4-H youth development professionals should be the first step in developing the Extension workforce. However, 4-H professionals find it challenging to use the Professional, Research, Knowledge and Competencies (PRKC), which consists of 348 unique competency items, to guide professional development trainings. The purpose of the study was to determine the professional development needs of National Association of Extension 4-H Youth Development Professionals (NAE4-HYDP) members. A Borich model was used to create a top 10 prioritized list of each PRKC domain to guide professional development of NAE4-HYDP members.

Restorative Justice (RJ) models of diversion from the criminal justice system have been used successfully with adults and youth charged with minor offenses. Professionally mediated RJ conferences bring together the offender and the person(s) harmed to discuss the impact of their actions and develop a plan to restore community safety and make amends. An RJ model aimed at diverting youth from the juvenile justice system for minor offenses has successfully worked in an urban region in Kentucky for over a decade. The same RJ model was piloted in a very rural region of the state. The program goal was to decrease youth involvement in the criminal justice system and create positive change within the communities and families involved in youth-initiated crimes. Interestingly, the rural location of the RJ program has run into unique challenges not experienced in the urban area. This paper examines preliminary outcomes data. Differences in juvenile justice and community involvement approaches that need to be addressed when establishing an RJ program in a geographically rural area are highlighted. Suggestions for how to incorporate RJ diversion programs into rural communities are provided.

Creative Youth Development (CYD) is a holistic approach to engaging young people through the arts and creativity to support them in thriving in all aspects of their lives. Young people consistently rank culminating events -- performances, exhibitions, youth summits, screenings of their films -- as a powerful motivator and key aspect of their involvement in creative youth development programs. This article features insights from a qualitative research study in the United States that explored how CYD programs adapted culminating events to the largely virtual program environments of 2020. Findings include challenges organizations faced in 2020; strategies for adapting culminating events during the COVID-19 pandemic, ranging from centering core principles of youth leadership and prioritizing connection with young people to creative strategies for engaging youth, including positioning new event formats as opportunities for youth to co-create entirely new experiences and events; and implications for the youth development field.

Volunteering can serve as a protective factor against substance abuse. Yet, it is unclear whether volunteering in specific community organizations, such as emergency services, promotes or protects against substance use. We aimed to (1) describe community volunteering characteristics among adolescents; (2) investigate differences in the prevalence of substance use according to community volunteering type; and (3) determine whether volunteering type was a predictor of substance use. We analyzed data from the 2018-2019 Health Behavior in School-aged Children survey among Israeli adolescents aged 11-17 years (N = 3972). Most participants (N = 2452; 61.7%) did not volunteer at all, 27.1% (N = 1077) volunteered in youth movements/councils, and 11.2% (N = 443) volunteered in community emergency services. In comparison to the emergency services group, there was a higher volunteering frequency among the youth movements/councils group. Of the three groups (nonvolunteering, volunteering in youth movements/councils, and volunteering in community emergency services), those in the community emergency services group reported a significantly higher prevalence of weekly alcohol use, lifetime cannabis use, and new psychoactive drug use, while no significant between-group differences were observed in smoking tobacco prevalence. Volunteering in the community emergency services has been linked to substance use, requiring the development of intervention programs by the school staff, before their active volunteering (e.g., guidance on emotional stress and substance abuse). Also, teachers can act as a protective factor for students, and identify emotional distress and anxiety in their students to prevent substance abuse. Furthermore, emergency services workers and instructors should also be aware of the higher risk of substance use among volunteering youth and should be given tools to better collaborate with parents and teachers in dealing with it.

Climate change is a timely topic and offers an overarching theme that can include a variety of STEM disciplines and technologies. In response to the pandemic, we developed and implemented an online science-based summer youth program in Climate Change Resiliency (CCR) for 11th and 12th graders in July 2020. Two sessions differing in content level and delivery were offered. The first session (S1) provided students with an introduction to the issues and scientific fields related to CCR. The second session (S2) explored CCR issues in more depth and utilized specific case studies to deliver content. Optional online informational and social activities were also offered including: UF admissions and financial aid panels; UF student life panels, climate change organization panels, and virtual game nights and socials. Overall program satisfaction was positive, with 97 percent of S1 and 81 percent of S2 participants reporting they were somewhat or extremely satisfied with the CCR program. Approximately 83 and 85 percent of S1 and S2, respectively thought the program's approach to teaching and learning was very or extremely effective. Future recommendations to improve the program include increasing synchronous face-to-face instruction time and participant-led learning opportunities.

No undergraduate or postgraduate programmes currently exist for the professional education of informal educators. The authors outline the development of previous programmes and consider the emergence of informal education as a discrete concept. The article then highlights some key failings in the professional education of informal educators and outlines some changes in the orientation and content of programmes.

The rapid growth of the U.S. Latinx population has led to an increased need for community organizations and academic institutions to develop partnerships focused on addressing gaps in health maintenance and education of Latinx individuals. Medical schools also have a responsibility to educate future physicians in delivering culturally sensitive care through community-oriented learning experiences. This case study approach outlines the logistics of establishing a youth mentoring program between a medical school and a Latinx community and demonstrates the benefits to the institution, medical students, and the population served. We also discuss the challenges arising from this partnership and present early program evaluation data showing consistent mentor satisfaction reported over time. This description of the program development provides a framework for creating similar initiatives in medical education to address known disparities in health and well-being of Latinx individuals and other minority populations.

Despite the established physical, social, and emotional benefits of participating in youth sport, such outcomes are not guaranteed. Indeed, purposeful efforts must be made to ensure that sport offerings are age-appropriate, promote engagement and enjoyment, and involve quality social relationships (e.g., Côté et al., 2020). The current article describes an integrated knowledge translation (iKT) partnership that developed a free story-based positive youth development (PYD) program for young ice hockey players (aged 10 to 12 years) in North America. The aim of the '1616 Program' is to use elite ice hockey players as role models--through storytelling--to serve as motivating agents to introduce and engage young athletes with important concepts pertaining to PYD. Content from the general and sport-specific PYD literature (e.g., Côté et al., 2010; Lerner, 2006) informed decisions during program development, with the process generally being guided by the Knowledge-To-Action (KTA) framework (Graham et al., 2006). Herein, we describe the iKT collaborative process that could serve as a template for other researchers interested in partnering with relevant invested partners to create youth development programs.

Co-design and youth participatory action research are promising methodologies for increasing youth engagement in well-being interventions. The current study included 10 recent high school graduates employed as youth advisors to co-design a youth-friendly positive psychology intervention targeting the post-school transition. The youth advisors received foundational training in positive psychology, psychological needs theory and emerging adulthood. They held regular meetings to develop a Positive Transitions programme (PTP) text messaging intervention, informed by discussion of key themes, issues and relevant practical tips. This paper aims to examine the co-design process from the perspective of the youth advisors. Each youth advisor completed a survey, and six of the advisors also participated in a focus group exploring their co-design experiences. Youth advisors noted a range of personal benefits from the co-design experience including learning, enjoyment, teamwork, achievement, and pride. Areas for improvement included clarity of the project scope and the provision of support and feedback. Insights from this process are discussed, with the aim of guiding future work seeking to design youth-friendly well-being interventions.

STEM pipeline programs often include research experiences for youth, but fewer focus on youth as shared decision-makers or leaders in research efforts. Youth participatory action research (YPAR) and community-based participatory research (CBPR) orientations suggest that the quality and relevance of research will benefit from youth partnership. Because youth do not traditionally have the opportunity to serve in this type of leadership capacity, STEM pipeline programs that wish to elevate the role of youth in research must create a new culture of co-creation that upends the traditional pedagogical models adolescents experience in high school.We present Research Kickoff as a strategy to engage youth as co-researchers from their very first experience in a year-long STEM pipeline program. We designed activities around a framework consisting of six components: content, process, voice, network, engagement, and culture. Each of the six components of our framework are represented in a series of activities that include participatory research processes, inviting collaboration and valuing diverse expertise, and relationship building. To inform future programs interested in engaging youth as co-researchers, we detail the iterative development of Research Kickoff over two cohorts and describe how it serves to engage youth as change agents from the first touch.

This article examines the limitations of developing youth programs through solely a human capital framework. While there is undoubtedly a strong connection between skills development and potential economic opportunity, our findings reveal that the story of youth who manage to navigate difficult economic environments is complex and nuanced. The article interprets findings through a critical capabilities lens. Its findings indicate that, beyond skills, youth leveraged microcapital gifts from families, connected with each other and broader social networks for new opportunities, and supported one another emotionally. Participants' stories demonstrate that converting youth capabilities into functioning in their environment requires varied forms of support and networking beyond simple skills development. The article considers implications for youth development programs and research.

We report on the process of planning, adapting, and implementing a brief, instrumental, school-based mentoring curriculum originally developed in the United States, in three cities in India. India has the world's largest population of young adults aged 10-24 years, a developmental period associated with heightened psychosocial stressors and the onset of mental health issues, as well as a dire shortage of mental health professionals. Moving services that are typically provided by highly skilled professionals to individuals with fewer credentials or less formal training (e.g., from psychologists to mentors) can increase access to adolescent mental health services. Yet, transferring programs internationally is accompanied by unique barriers including cultural differences, and should be guided by an established framework. In this paper, we discuss the formation of a research-practice partnership designed to generate applied knowledge through emic cultural perspectives. We describe each stage of the program adaptation process within the Cultural Adaptation Framework (Fendt-Newlin et al., 2020), including our decisions to strategically adjust, remove, or retain content from the original mentoring intervention. Although program delivery was prematurely discontinued due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we provide a brief synopsis of lessons learned through the international partnership.

Opportunity youth (OY; i.e., youth ages 16--24 who are neither working nor in school) are a population who is difficult to engage and retain in educational programs, particularly in community college career and technical education (CTE) programs. OY are an important population to community colleges, as CTE programs culminating in industry-recognized credentials and employment constitute an important on-ramp to the workforce for young adults. The Manufacturing Training Program is a vocational training program offered at a local community college in Phoenix, Arizona that was informed by input from youth and service providers to support OY in obtaining the necessary technical skills/credential for entry-level employment in manufacturing. Researchers conducted a qualitative study using in-depth interviews with 32 program stakeholders and beneficiaries (i.e., 14 staff and 18 youth). Data were coded and analyzed using content analysis to identify major themes for each stakeholder and beneficiary group interviewed as well as working hypotheses to guide future CTE program development. Findings suggest that there are both challenges and successes related to recruiting, retaining and employing OY. Recruitment challenges include lack of information about and disinterest in manufacturing, whereas successes include leveraging family members in recruiting youth. Retention challenges include meeting OYs' basic needs, whereas successes include providing quality case management. Employment challenges include limited employer participation whereas successes include developing an effective process to connect employers with trained youth. Findings and lessons learned on recruitment, retention, and employment challenges and successes offer direction for community colleges to develop and strengthen CTE programs for OY.

Background: The goal of the study was to develop and verify a pathway model (or theory of change) for STEM Scouts, an out-of-school time (OST), positive youth development program for elementary through high school-aged youth. Pathway models include connections between hypothesized activities to short-, mid-, and long-term outcomes. STEM Scouts is offered across the United States and a secondary goal of the study was to understand the STEM ecosystem in the communities where STEM Scouts is currently implemented. Results: Evidence mapping was conducted to determine the extent to which the theory of change was consistent with the extant literature; 69% of the connections on the key pathways were supported by research. For connections where supporting evidence was not found, the connections were either removed or retained because the connection between constructs was understudied. The literature review also led to the addition of outcomes and language revisions to more closely align with terminology used in the literature. Focus groups were conducted to determine the extent to which the pathway model was consistent with youth and adult participants' lived experience and to better understand STEM ecosystems. The pathway model resonated with most participants' experiences with STEM Scouts. Participants across multiple focus groups suggested adding outcomes related to learning and leadership. Parents and other family members, the availability of OST STEM programs, and schools were frequently noted as critical elements of the STEM ecosystem. Conclusions: Careful evaluation planning, including the development and validation of a detailed theory of change, is a critical step in STEM education program evaluation. This study revealed the value added when such steps are taken. Critical outcomes and connections would have been missed without the development and validation of the theory of change which will form the basis of a future evaluation. OST STEM programs should strive to engage in careful and detailed evaluation planning in advance of engaging in program evaluation.

This study analyzes "Act Out Justice" (AOJ), a youth theatre for social change initiative of Orlando Repertory Theatre and the University of Central Florida. Employing AOJ's model of reflective collaborative inquiry (Horn et al., 2020), this article dramatizes the practice of responding to one's own work. Through narrative and dialogical reflection, four leaders of AOJ identify four challenges within the 2018-2019 programming: "building relationships, identifying social justice topics, accessing prior knowledge, and determining the audience demographic" (Horn et al., 2020, p. 378). Using reflective collaborative inquiry, the authors solidify programmatic changes in response to these challenges. This article illustrates the evolution of Act Out Justice as it relates to other theatre for social change work with young people and explores new modes for dialoguing, reflecting, and making programmatic changes.

For many youth, afterschool programs positively fill the time between school and home. Quality out-of-school time (OST) programs clearly can have beneficial social and academic effects on youth (Durlak, Weissberg, & Pachan, 2010; Eccles, Barber, Stone, & Hunt, 2003; Vandell et al., 2005). However, these outcomes are not guaranteed (Chen & Harklau, 2017; Eccles et al., 2003). Realizing the potential for improved social and academic outcomes depends at least in part on the ways in which afterschool programs are structured. At the most basic level, in order to gain the potential benefits of afterschool programming, young people must participate. One common strategy is to structure program activities so that they build, over a semester or a year, to a culminating end product. Larson (2000) and Heath (2001) have referred to this pattern as a "temporal arc." This article is based on a yearlong ethnographic study, consisting of over 240 hours of participant-observations during the 2015-2016 school year.

Including youth in the development and evaluation of out-of-school time (OST) programs has positive effects on youth, the organizations that serve them, and the communities in which they live. Such involvement can improve young people's social competence, foster leadership and engagement, and empower groups. Youth provide unique perspectives on their lived experiences. gn with their resources and are easy to implement. This article describes Youth Generate and Organize (Youth GO), a structured, developmentally appropriate approach to gathering youth perspectives designed to be implemented with the time and resources available in most OST settings. The strengths, limitations, and feasibility of Youth GO are illustrated through its implementation in an OST program to support the academic success of youth living in public housing.

In this article, two teacher educator researchers engage in a duologue to explore the pedagogical and poetic openings experienced during two individual youth empowerment school-based research projects--one a middle school poetry project, the other a high-school mentoring project. The projects engage minoritized youth with undergraduate students in colleges of education utilizing a methodology grounded in a theory of physical and metaphorical borderlands and border pedagogy for agentive participation. We assert that intentional formation of border spaces of participation and care within the silencing spaces of school serves as a foundation from which youth may build capacity for future actions for social activism and change.

Early agricultural education included youth judging activities, in which farm boys matched skills with students from neighboring schools. In 1925, students competed in a National Dairy Judging Contest in Indianapolis held specifically for vocational students. Based on the success of this contest, the Federal Board for Vocational Education requested the contest committee make arrangements for hosting a national livestock judging contest for vocational students the next year. Representatives from the American Royal Livestock Show agreed to provide a livestock judging contest and educational program specifically for vocational students. In 1926, students from 22 states converged in Kansas City, Missouri to compete in the first National Livestock Judging Contest. Cooperation between Kansas City agribusiness leaders, the Kansas City Star, and the U.S. Department of Education staff led to the development of a National Congress of Vocational Agriculture Students, consisting of agricultural youth showing and judging at the American Royal. The congress played a substantial role in the formation of the Future Farmers of America and shaped many traditions still practiced by the organization today. Authors explore the traditions of judging events and industry sponsorships in the context of today's National FFA Organization.

Youth within juvenile justice facilities (JJFs) are often some of the most vulnerable and marginalized population in our communities. These youth often have experienced trauma, social-emotional learning (SEL) issues as well as difficulties in school. Many of these youth have had little opportunity to express their voice in positive and healthy ways. Youth voice, however, may be a key to help with not only treatment and programming within JJFs but also with successful habilitation and rehabilitation of youth. This article presents how combining youth voice and SEL may help youth within JJFs, and then explore how the whole youth model lens could create an environment to effectively utilize youth voice, in combination with SEL, to improve youth treatment and programming engagement within JJFs.

This article describes the first year of a partnership between a university and a community organization working to improve and expand a community-based multigenerational mentoring program for African American adolescent girls ages 12-17. The mentoring program, set in an urban Midwestern city, is a collaboration between university researcher-consultants and the program administrator of an out-of-school time (OST) program at a local community center. Program mentors are university faculty, students, and community members. Written by an interdisciplinary research team, this manuscript centers issues in consultation during the formative (research) phases of participatory culture-specific consultation. Using the Participatory Culture-Specific Intervention Model (PCSIM) as a guiding framework, authors review the processes, successes, and challenges of the formative phases of PCSIM application.

Orienting and welcoming first-year students to campus and to honors programs are often key components of program development. At an institutional level, successful orientation programs can positively affect retention rates from the first to second year. The greater a student's involvement and integration into the life of the university, the less likely the student is to leave (Tinto). Institutional retention often translates into retention within honors programs as well. The most important benefit of orientation, however, is that students feel welcomed at the university and within the honors program. Not only do they understand the requirements of the program, but they also make friends and begin to envision how they might use their honors program experience to grow as scholars and citizens while also having a bit of fun in the process. In an attempt to achieve all of these goals, the honors program at Minnesota State University, Mankato, established a first-year honors student retreat incorporating peer mentors. This article describes the rationale behind the first-year student retreat, the procedures for organizing and facilitating it, and its impact on both first-year students and mentors. The hope is that this article might inspire and encourage other honors programs to implement high-impact practices that facilitate successful student transition into college.

The research urgency is caused by the increase of social responsibility of universities for improvement of the quality of higher education and development of students' socio-professional values. In terms of the conflicting realities of modern society the youth policy at the University is the most important tool to form students' commitment to universal human and national values, involvement in socio-political, socio-cultural and professional activities. The purpose of this article is to develop practical recommendations for the development and implementation of youth policy in the University as a tool for development of student public associations. The leading approach of the study is the integrative approach which allows to consider the youth policy in the University as a component of the educational process that combines a system of normative-legal, organizational- managerial, psychological-pedagogical, scientific-methodical measures that are implemented on the basis of interaction with civil society institutions, with the aim of expanding opportunities for effective self-realization of young people and achievement of sustainable socio-economic development of modern society. The study involved 450 teachers, 600 students, which revealed the criteria for the effectiveness of youth policy at the University. Main results of the research consist in the identification of organizational and managerial measures aimed at the creation and coordination of the activities of the Department of youth policy at the University (development of local normative acts, specific activities in areas of the state youth policy, interaction with public federations and associations); psycho-pedagogical measures to facilitate the social adaptation of students (workshops, individual and group counseling, the study of individual-typological peculiarities of the personality of students). The significance of the results is that the identified organizational and managerial measures allow us to determine the functions and structure of the Department of youth policy at the University. The implementation of psycho-educational measures allows us to optimize the development of student self-government.

4-H, as a research-based positive youth development program, should be affirming and inclusive for all youths, including those who are members of LGBTQ+ communities. This article provides 4-H youth development professionals with a series of checklists for supporting LGBTQ+ participation, focusing on systemic advocacy, guidance and protocols, programming, and professional development and dispositions. Using these checklists, 4-H professionals can identify areas of strength and growth for themselves and their programs. Further, they can enable youth thriving, increase protective factors, and reduce risk factors by cultivating inclusive and affirming 4-H spaces.

This article discusses social innovation in education informed by arts-based and Indigenous ways of knowing. I use the term Indigenous to refer to First Peoples' and their wisdom traditions from places around the world and the term Aboriginal to refer to the diverse First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples of Canada. The article looks at the ethical imperative for doing socially innovative work, and examines practices with potential for embedding social innovation in educational scholarship, including experiential and relational educational approaches, such as community-service learning and restorative justice; participatory action research as an allied research approach; and community arts framed as cultural democracy. It describes a research project with street-involved youth as a case study for research that moves toward social innovation through the Government of Canada Policy Research Initiative's five steps involved in a co-creative social innovation project.

Youth mental health is an area of profound disparity between the demand and supply of services, particularly in schools that serve students at risk of school dropout. This article describes the conceptual foundations and implementation of "MAGNIFY", a program that provides free group counseling to small alternative schools with students who have a history of behavioral problems in school or have been labeled at risk of dropping out of school. MAGNIFY is a non-structured program that uses school counseling graduate students to facilitate weekly school-based interpersonal process groups and is financially supported by local businesses and donors. Program components, finances, limitations, and implications are discussed.

You have to stick with it. It takes time, patience, trial and error, failure, and persistence. It is almost never perfect or finished, but, with a good team, you can build something that works. These are the lessons youth learn when building a robot, as many do in the out-of-school time (OST) programs supported by the initiative described in this article. Similarly, implementing high-quality, sustainable programming in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) across the largest publicly funded OST system in the country took time, teamwork, and persistence. In this article, the authors describe how the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) and the New York Academy of Sciences collaborated to develop a replicable program model for increasing the capacity of OST organizations to provide STEM learning opportunities. The process of developing this model and the lessons they learned provide a roadmap for other OST systems looking to enhance program capacity.

Today's Cooperative Extension organization continues to face challenges of providing relevant, quality programming in urban communities. Challenges include the ability to build capacity in Extension's urban youth educators to assess and interpret the unique, variable needs of urban clients and to communicate effectively the identified needs to the state land-grant institution to leverage resources. To be responsive, intentional change can be informed and initiated by those closest to the challenges of creating thriving 4-H programs in urban environments--the urban Extension youth educator. Guided by open and sociotechnical systems theory, this multiple case action research study used the critical incident methodology to explore boundary-spanning behaviors of urban Extension youth educators. Four conclusions were drawn from an analysis of the findings including an adaptation of the community-based problem solver quadrant of the Weerts and Sandmann (2010) university-community engagement model. Boundary-spanning behaviors can inform organizational policies related to program development, staff development, hiring procedures, and performance evaluation procedures.

American colleges and universities serve more minors (i.e., children under the age of 18), than adults and traditional-age college students. Higher education institutions provide services and programs, such as childcare programs, youth-serving educational activities, and pre-college learning or employment. Campuses are open for transient visitors in their museums, academic buildings, and athletic facilities. As a result, minors who interact with colleges and universities through programs and services typically are subject to more diverse risks than in their K-12 settings and homes. Thus, colleges and universities have a critical responsibility to safeguard minors who are in their care. Over the past decade, several scandals and crises have exposed the risk for child maltreatment and abuse on campuses. Predators use private access to minors and influence on campus and in nearby communities to commit child maltreatment and sexual abuse. In response, to protect children in university-sponsored programs and services, our universities as well as many institutions across the United States have implemented youth protection policies and programs that foster safe environments for activities held on and off campuses. This article will address issues to consider when developing youth protection programs, the role of key partnerships in maintaining vigilance to protect minors, and the challenges and opportunities presented to institutions of higher education as they navigate a national climate that calls for them to protect minors in their care.

Each year, over 600 youth under the age of 25 experience literal homelessness in Austin, Texas. Of these youth, 76% have a history of involvement with foster care or the juvenile justice system--far exceeding the rates of system involvement observed among homeless youth in other large communities in the United States (approximately 54%; Voices of Youth Count, 2017). Recently, Austin was selected by the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development as one of ten communities nationwide to participate in the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program (YHDP), a federal initiative designed to effectively end youth homelessness by 2020. Youth with lived experience are central players in the development and implementation of Austin's response to the youth homelessness crisis. A group of twelve of these youth (the "Austin Youth Collective to End Youth Homelessness," or AYC) serve as key decision-making partners within the Austin YHDP team. Representatives of the AYC are deeply involved at every level of the community planning process, from the development of youth-centric housing options to system redesign efforts to ensure that youth do not exit the foster care or juvenile justice systems to homelessness. The article provides an overview of the development and contributions of the AYC--including their programmatic recommendations and advocacy work--as well as key recommendations for communities looking to leverage youth voice at the systems level.