Authors:

Taylor Marie Hollis

Date Created:

Not specified

Course Title:

Professor:

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About Paper:

The purpose of this community-based research project is to understand the needs of youth that can be fulfilled with an after-school program. Although the afterschool program's founder identified a need to address a cardiovascular health epidemic in the community, there remains an opportunity to ask the community what they would want to see in afterschool programming. Thus, our goal is to assess the needs of the community's youth so we can make recommendations to the program leadership on what the community needs from after-school programming. We used transcripts from three focus groups to determine the needs of the community's youth. One transcript included three parents whose children are not enrolled in the after-school program, while two others included youth from kindergarten through twelfth grade who are enrolled in the program. We used thematic analysis to identify trends in the data, which revealed what the community wants fulfilled. Our results showed that youth have slightly different needs, ranging from boredom prevention, school help, mental health help, and a safe environment. Based on our findings, we recommend teaming up with a community partner that specializes in mental health, providing more engaging learning materials, and creating opportunities for more parent and Purdue student volunteers. Keywords: Afterschool; Youth; Development; Qualitative; Community

Source:

Purdue University / 2025

Topics:

No topics listed

Co-authors:

Taylor Marie Hollis