The YMCA of Greater Long Beach Youth Institute established in 2001, runs an out-of-school program for high school students at the California State University in Long Beach (USA). They offer an intensive summer technology program and the year-round academic support program. They try to reach particularly the disadvantaged group of low-income urban high school youth.
Julie O’Donnell and Sandra L. Kirkner did a study on the effects of the YMCA out-of-school program on the high school students. The study shows that the program was successful and had a positive influence on the grades, scores and school attendance of the students when compared to a randomly selected comparison group that did not attend the YMCA program.
These results were just recently published in an article titled “Effects of an out-of-school program on urban high school youth’s academic performance” in the Journal of Community Psychology (Vol. 42, No. 2, 2014).
If you want to have a detailed look on the results, how the YMCA empowers young people, click here to read the full article
See more at: http://www.lbymcayi.org/