Positive youth development (PYD) focuses on the healthy development of all young people. Programs that follow a PYD approach build on young people’s strengths, helping them cultivate their talents, increase feelings of self-worth, and use the confidence and skills they gain to make positive, healthy decisions about how to live their lives.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has funded youth development programs since the early 1990s. Since that time it has funded two national programs with positive youth development elements:
- Urban Health Initiative: Working to Ensure the Health and Safety of Children
- After School: Connecting Children at Risk with Responsible Adults to Help Reduce Youth Substance Abuse and Other Health-Compromising Behaviors
RWJF has also funded more than 75 other individual grants. The Foundation’s total investment in this area has been more than $95 million.
Another report on positive youth development, by Renee Wilson Simmons, will soon be posted on the Vulnerable Populations section of the RWJF website; it will be linked to this report when it is available.
Work in positive youth development generally fell into the following three categories:
- Research and evaluation projects that aimed to identify effective PYD interventions.
- Service programs that engaged youth directly by providing recreational activities, life or job skills training, and adult or peer mentoring.
- Coalition building and advocacy projects that organized communities or promoted youth development.
This Topic Summary synthesizes the results from 23 projects reported on by the RWJF Program Results Unit. The Foundation continues to fund projects and programs in this area (see the Appendix). This report will be updated to include active work as it is completed.