Our Projects
Network Development
Since April 2007, the Teen Initiative has distributed $190,000 in grants to nine Boston networks. Of those, five have met the quality and performance benchmarks required to continue with the Initiative. These networks have also received up to 30 hours of consulting to support the development of strategic plans, memorandums of understanding, brand identities, and statements of purpose.
The Teen Initiative’s initial investments have generated tremendous activity and a greater sense of community among youth development providers and youth themselves. This has resulted in more inter-organizational youth referrals and greater utilization of these referrals. It has helped neighborhoods respond more thoughtfully and collaboratively to youth violence and created opportunities to bridge the divides that sometimes pit youth against each other. By leveraging their connections, networks have been able to attract additional financial resources and develop new relationships with the City, BPD, BPS, and BPHC. Youth workers report that the networks have made them more effective and their jobs more rewarding. These successes have attracted new partners and further strengthened network capacity.
The Teen Initiative expects to continue supporting these networks through Fiscal Year 2010, after which it expects to reduce its direct support for the original cohort of networks in order to nurture additional networks in other Boston neighborhoods.
Research
Between 2008 and 2011, the Teen Initiative is funding a multi-year effort to better understand the youth it serves and the outcomes that networks generate. We are particularly interested in comparing the cohort of youth served by the Teen Initiative with the City’s youth population in general, the BPS student body, and the subset of youth that are academically “at-risk” or “off-track.”
Periodic research will also evaluate how the Teen Initiative is impacting youth participation in out-of-school time opportunities, the quality of that participation, and the rate at which youth utilize other services in the network, especially physical and mental health services.
