Youth Development

EDC in collaboration with partners in education, youth media and business, is creating a youth-produced, Web-based media series and companion educator materials on science and engineering careers, targeting girls from underserved groups (minority populations, youth of low socioeconomic status and those with disabilities). The Girls Communicating Career Connections (GC3) project’s media series—short video segments produced by middle school aged girls—will capture the inquiry-based learning experiences of girls, as they investigate what it means to be a scientist or engineer.

CC&F will develop and launch a major new region on the PBS Parents Web site to help parents and caregivers nurture the creativity of their children from birth through age eight. CC&F is designing both online and real world games and activities to encourage parents and children to interact in ways that enhance creativity. To help adults understand how each activity relates to creative development and to spark their own ideas on how to further it, CC&F staff are also writing articles and adding resources.

EDC works with The National Girls Collaborative Project to: (1) maximize access to shared resources across projects and with public and private sector organizations and institutions interested in expanding girls’ participation in STEM; (2) strengthen capacity of existing and evolving projects by sharing promising practices, research and program models, outcomes, and products; and (3) use the leverage of networks andr collaborations of individual girl-serving STEM programs to create the tipping point for gender equity in STEM.

EDC delivers intensive professional development for afterschool providers in the integration of academic content in afterschool programming. Created in partnership with the Afterschool All-Stars, Citizen Schools, CNYD, and Foundations Inc., the trainings emphasize experiential learning approaches, positive youth development principles, and on-going staff leadership and development.

The Lorain City School District’s Smaller Learning Communities (SLC) project provides professional development, career development, college awareness activities, and summer school programming in support of six SLCs. EDC conducts a project evaluation that focuses on changes in student performance attributable to the project and the degree of integration of professional development in the classroom.

EDC is providing technical assistance to the youth media field and Time Warner’s community grantees, building the capacity of these programs to measure their impact more effectively. Activities include individual consultation with grantees, training in a range of evaluation strategies, dissemination of promising evaluation practices, and the development of a cross-site research agenda.

The Power Users of Technology Initiative was launched by EDC and the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP) at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City in December, 2004.