Safe and Smart: Making After-School Hours Work for Kids - June 1998

A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Communities Meeting the Need for
After-School Activities


YouthARTS Program
San Antonio, Texas
Atlanta, Georgia
Portland, Oregon
Contact: Bill Bulick, 503-823-5405

YouthArts is a collaborative agreement between the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and three local arts agencies in the cities of San Antonio, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; and Portland, Oregon. The project is designed to determine the effectiveness of arts-related programs to prevent delinquency among youth at risk. Two of the programs target older youth on probation while the third is an after-school program for sixth graders. An OJJDP evaluation of the program found that a greater proportion of Youth Arts program participants showed improvements in their attitudes toward school, self-esteem, self-efficacy, positive peer associations, and resistance to peer pressure than did comparison youth, and fewer YouthArts program participants had new court referrals during the program period than did comparison youth.
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