Results & Research

A significant problem with after school programs is that they tend to attract the 10% of students who are already involved in some form of extracurricular activity.  On average, 90% of high school students are not involved in extra-curricular activities.  The number is 60% if sports are included.  That means only 10% - 40% of students get involved in extra-curricular activities.  Yet, 80% of students who develop problem behaviors with drugs, alcohol, teen-pregnancy, unemployment and violence are students who are not involved in any form of after school programming. These are the kids most at risk.   How do we reach these students?

Problems with motivation are at the core of this issue.  Students do not become involved in activities that they believe have no relevance to their lives.  The Unity Project by-passes this problem by building its activities around issues students themselves identify as important.  Our pilot studies indicated that 90% of our participants had never previously been involved in an after school activity.  We were reaching and actively engaging exactly those students most at risk.

The next phase of our research and assessment will be carried out through our partner, the Reavis School, in Chicago.  There, we will begin the second phase of our outcome research looking at risk and asset indicators.  Our purpose will be to look at the unique features of the Unity Project model as it relates to the sequence of positive decision making skills present in our Transformation Exercise sequence as well as the strength of the changes seen after involvement in our program.  We will correlate these outcomes to other indicators related to truancy, disciplinary actions, academic achievement and social competence.

In addition, we will institute pre and post testing of positive decision making indicators in the after school programs of our SADD and DYCD partners.  These partnerships represent an opportunity to gather data on unprecedented numbers of students.  This work will be conducted by the Unity Project in conjunction with our academic relationships with the Judge Baker Children’s Center at Harvard University and other universities.