Northwest Youth Empowerment Demonstration Grant

Background:

According to the Latino Gang Violence Prevention Task Force of Multnomah County (2004):

Over the last three years, Latino gang-related shootings and other violence increased in North/Northeast Portland and East Multnomah County. In 2001, for example, four Latino youth, victims of gang shootings, were killed in a 10-month period. . . . Gang prevention and policing does not meet the needs of an increasing Latino gang presence . . . In addition, existing county, state, and city services show a lack of language and culturally specific intervention efforts to high-risk Latino youth and their families (p. 8).

In Oregon, Hispanic youth had a dropout rate of 9.6 compared to 3.8 for White youth (Oregon Department of Education, 2006). Reynolds Hig h School , located in the target area, had 90 dropouts, with 47% being White, 46% Hispanic, and 7% other. This is a disproportionate representation of Hispanic youth among the dropouts as 72% of the enrolled students are White, 16% Hispanic, and 12% other.

The University of Oregon (UO) has a long history of involvement with minorities in the community. For example, Tary Tobin is serving on the dissertation committee of Jorge Preciado who is studying the effect of using community volunteers as tutors for Latino children who have reading and behavior problems. Results to date indicate that reading skills improved and behavior problems were reduced. UO has a branch in Portland and is involved in several similar projects in the Portland area. The partner organizations for include Northwest Family Services, Mt. Hood Community College; and four middle schools: Reynolds Middle School, Alice Ott Middle School, H.B. Lee Middle School, and Ron Russell Middle School. NWFS has been serving the Latino community in the Portland area for over 7 years. All four middle school partners will provide space at the school for after-school and summer Centers for the proposed project so that the centers will be near the students’ homes. Parents of the students may also receive parenting education classes.

Objectives:

Objective I. Individual youth will show improved academic performance each year, or at least by the end of the 3 rd year, or, for individuals with high initial academic performance, that high performance will be maintained throughout the course of the 3 year project.

Objective II. Individual youth will maintain or show improvement (if needed) in personal development and wellness (e.g., physical and mental health, social competence, and adaptive functioning), within one year or at least by the end of the program, or, if improvement is not needed, will maintain competent ratings.

Objective III . Individual youth will maintain or show improvement (if needed) in assets associated with positive youth development, within one year or at least by the end of the program, as measured on the Developmental Assets Profile.

Objective IV. At the end of the program, youth will have (a) greater knowledge of Latino cultural heritage, (b) greater awareness of multicultural issues, (c) increased participation in cultural events and (d) increased enjoyment of music and other creative arts associated with Latino culture.

Objective V. Youth will increase their awareness of career options and preparation requirements, along with deepening their own self-knowledge of their aptitudes and interests, as measured by their ability to create and maintain a practical and individualized career development portfolio.

Program Plan:

Project staff will work with four participating schools to a total of 60 to 100 potential participants for the target cohort. Close contact will be maintained with the schools to continue to accept students if openings were to occur, in order to replace any of the original cohort who drop out. Bi-weekly after-school sessions will be held in Youth Centers in each school throughout the school year for at least 4 hours each week and for at least 3 weeks in the summer for 20 hours per week. Datos y Razones, a set of character-based prevention lessons and activities developed by Northwest Family Services especially for after-school sessions with Latino/a middle school age youth, will be used, along with other supporting materials and activities, service learning projects, tutoring including English language development, creative activities (e.g., crafts, art, drama), event planning, recreation, and a social learning component. The proposed approach is a relationship-based, case management model of youth service designed to maximize youth engagement. Project staff will work with the youth and their families to create a youth development plan. The plan will review their skills, needs, interests, goals, and plans for achieving goals. NWFS staff who are bi-cultural and bilingual, and who have experience in work with youth in after-school programs and training in providing educational youth development activities, will serve as case workers and will work closely with college student interns to provide tutoring and mentoring and other enrichment activities.

Project staff will work with youth to develop and complete age appropriate community service learning projects. Project staff will work with board members to identify resources and opportunities for these projects. Structured, skill-focused parent classes will be offered. These classes will utilize the Como Ense Zar los DATOS de la Vida curricula. This program has been used extensively and successfully with a wide variety of Latino parents from diverse socio-economic and educational backgrounds. Incentives will be incorporated to enhance parent participation (e.g., door prizes, refreshments, social activities). An exciting and distinctive event held toward the end of the school year will be a festival called “¡Gritalo…soy Latino!”

Tracking and Evaluation Plan:

Demographic data will be collected in the Youth Development Plans, in formal youth files, and on several other measures. Process variables will be tracked and evaluated with data from Youth Development Plans; Career Portfolios; Youth and Family Educators’ records of hours of support, attendance, and notes; Fidelity of Implementation Checklists and Records of Observations completed by the Project Director, and by records of college students’ participation and training. All outcome variables will measure change from baseline data collected at the start of the program to data collected in the 2 nd and 3 rd years of the program. For objectives 1 and 2, outcomes will be measured by the Youth Self-Report (YSR) and Child Behavior Checklist ( CBCL) (Achenbach, 2001). The Search Institute’s Developmental Assets Profile will measure outcomes for objective 3. A cultural enrichment questionnaire will be developed to measure outcomes for objective 4. A career portfolio will be the measure of outcomes for Objective 5. Impact measures will include changes in behaviors and patterns over time on factors that affect violent, abusive and other unhealthy behaviors. Instruments that will provide data for assessing impact include the Youth Development Plans, CBCL, YSR, the Developmental Assets Profile, the Career Portfolio, the formal student file, a Parent Satisfaction Survey, and Records of Observations.

The Program Director will be responsible for the project’s evaluation and for data analysis for each indicator. Descriptive analyses will include frequency counts, means and standard deviations for continuous variables and percentages for categorical variables. Chi Square Tests will be used where appropriate to look for statistically significant (p < .05) differences by gender and age. Charts will be developed for visual analysis of comparisons.

Products:

Products to be developed include manuals and guides (in print and digital formats) for replicating the program in similar communities. An online course will be developed, as well as materials for staff development and for supervision and training of tutors and mentors. A web site will be developed and maintained where information about the project, manuals and guides, and other resources will be available for stakeholders and interested persons.