Inexpensive Intervention Especially for At Risk Youth

This strategy is right on.

One of my Mentees joined an inner-city afterschool program for at-risk youths as a tutor. While she enjoyed the challenge, she felt that the impact was unsatisfying. No matter how hard she worked, it was difficult to engage the children. Instead of being discouraged, she took the initiative to take formal courses, participated with a network of after-school and summer programs and rounded off her knowledge base for working with at-risk students.

A leadership opportunity arose in the form of developing a curriculum to motivate the children to succeed. That program has resulted in improved behavior, student attendance, better grades and school graduation rate. 17 youths have graduated high school and 13 have gone on to technical or 2–4 year college.

The interventons work; but, the issue is to be able to scale the programs.