Community based organizations

I will now divert my attention away from social capital towards community based organizations. When we were discussing our draft, we realized that we have not focused much attention on community based organizations. It is imperative that we do so, as ALA is a community based organization and thus the cornerstone of PYD. I came across a good article, "Community Counts: How Youth Organizations Matter for Youth Development," by Milbrey W. McLaughlin. It is a ten year study of 120 youth-based orgs. in 34 different cities, which includes follow-up studies and long and short term strategies for involved domains. It concludes that a PYD program cannot be successful without community member involvement and support.
The article starts out with discussing this societal perception of how today's youth are different from previous generations; youth are "less motivated, and more likely to get into trouble" (2). However, the reality is that community, family, school networks have created gaps, which mostly affect youth (2). They do not have the adequate attention and support to develop into skilled adults. In all neighborhoods, regardless of socio-economic class, ethnicity, or race, "many youth find themselves adrift" (2). The community needs to step up and realize the importance of youth, and develop a safe, effective program (as fits with the characteristics of the community) with the principles we outlined in our draft to fill in the gaps left by schools and families (3). The article goes on and discusses what youth achieved in these programs (Note: Look at this for our last section "youth outcomes"): 1. Academic Success; and 2. Life Skills (one of the them being civic engagement- I will add that to the paper). Other important points in the article are "how positive school-community connections are unusual" (26)- need for community organizations to connect program objectives and progress with the school.
One problem I had with this article was the lack of family in this equation. The author discusses the importance of youth, community, and school to have interwoven relationships, but makes little reference to the family. Yes this study focused on more "at-risk" youth from troubled neighborhoods, who some experienced violence and indifference at home; however, that does not mean the family should be disregarded. Because 'failure' in establishing good relationships with their children should not translate as incapable of establishing relationships with the school and community organization. By being incorporated into the community and school networks, the family may be more able to work on their relationships with their children.
Overall, this article presents solid information for our paper about the domains of community and schools .