An Investigation of Philadelphia's Youth Aid Panel: A Community-Based Diversion Program for First-Time Youthful Offenders

The formal justice system currently does not have the resources to effectively deal with nonviolent first-time offending youth, oftentimes leaving them with little punishment aside from a criminal record. This report offers a close examination of Philadelphia's Youth Aid Panels (YAP), which seeks to provide alternative sentencing for this high-risk population through the collaboration of volunteer community members, victims, parent(s)/guardian and a law enforcement official. YAP offers victims a better sense of restitution while also providing the youth with the real opportunity to reintegrate into society without a record. Our initial exploratory evaluation shows promising results, and we offer a several recommendations to strengthen YAP programs

Community Change for Youth Development: Ten Lessons from the CCYD Initiative

From 1995 through 2002, P/PV worked with six neighborhoods around the country to develop and institute a framework of "core concepts" to guide youth programming for the nonschool hours. The goal was to create programming that would involve a high proportion of each neighborhood's several thousand adolescents. This report summarizes the basic lessons that emerged from this Community Change for Youth Development (CCYD) initiative. The lessons address such topics as the usefulness of a "core concepts" approach; the dos and don'ts of involving neighborhood residents in change initiatives; the role of research; the role of youth; and the capacity of neighborhood-wide approaches to attract high-risk youth

The Young Unwed Fathers Pilot Project: Initial Implementation Report Executive Summary

The executive summary of Young Unwed Fathers Pilot Project presents P/PV's early findings from the initial implementation of this program which attempted to connect young fathers with the labor market and parental supports. This interim report documents our difficulties and successes with recruitment, retention, service delivery and establishment of linkages with employment/training and child support enforcement agencies. It also highlights many of the common characteristics and behaviors of the young father participants, which lays the necessary groundwork for developing an effective program targeting for this vulnerable population

Community Change for Youth Development in Kansas City

Kansas City, Missouri, is one of six sites in Community Change for Youth Development (CCYD), a national demonstration project aiming to increase basic supports and opportunities available to youth aged 12-20. The lead agency is the YMCA of Greater Kansas City; because of its considerable organizational capacity and relationship with funders, the YMCA was successful in operating and expanding CCYD. This report focuses on the benefits of working with the YMCA of Greater Kansas City and the challenges faced by the organization in leading a community-based initiative in three urban neighborhoods

Getting from Here to There: The Bridges to Work Demonstration First Report to the Field

In response to the increase in inner-city joblessness and the growing suburbanization of employment in the early 1990s, P/PV's developed the Bridges to Work initiative. Bridges provided transportation to allow inner-city residents to reach suburban jobs while also offering limited support services aimed at mitigating problems created or exacerbated by the longer daily commutes. This report examines the challenges and achievements pilot sites experienced in trying to build partnerships between cities and suburbs agencies during the planning and implementation phases

Resident Involvement in Community Change: The Experiences of Two Initiatives

The 1990s saw a resurgence of interest in community development initiatives targeting poor and disadvantaged communities. That resurgence involves at least one major assumption: that involving residents -- both adults and youth -- creates community ownership and increases grassroots participation in ways that will ultimately lead to stronger, more sustainable initiatives. This report examines the development of resident involvement strategies in eight sites participating in P/PV's Community Change for Youth Development (CCYD) initiative and Plain Talk, The Annie E. Casey Foundation's initiative to prevent teen pregnancy (which P/PV evaluated). The authors identify three stages of resident involvement observed across all eight sites; document the ways in which residents contributed to the local site activities; and discuss the challenges of resident governance strategies

The Young Unwed Fathers Pilot Project: Initial Implementation Report

Given the limited experience that programs have had with young fathers and the field's limited knowledge about the type of services that would engage and benefit them, P/PV determined that a test of various local service-delivery approaches was needed to provide comparative information for policymakers and the field. This interim report of our Young Unwed Fathers Pilot Program documents the struggles and achievements we had in implementing this program during the early 1990s in six sites across the nation: Cleveland, Racine, Fresno, St. Petersburg, Annapolis, and Philadelphia