Camp Trinity: A Case Study of Youth Social and Emotional Development in After-School Programs (2016)

Undergraduate: Shelby Thomas

Faculty Advisor: Patrick Akos
Department: Global Studies

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After-school programs provide a safe environment for youth and seek to achieve positive youth development. Current research suggests that variables such as the intensity, duration, and breadth of engagement by youth, healthy staff-youth relations, implementing a SAFE (sequenced, active, focused, explicit) approach to programming, skill building challenges and family engagement impact developmental outcomes in youth. This project provides a best practice audit of Camp Trinity's After-School Program as a case study. Results suggest that Camp Trinity is a fairly effective program to the highly engaged portion of participants, but implementing explicit developmental goals into and increasing the skill building orientation of their activities could strengthen their impact on the social and emotional development of their youth participants. These data are considered in the context of after school programming broadly as a means to promote positive academic and developmental outcomes in youth.