The David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality empowers education and human service leaders to adapt, implement, and scale best-in-class, research validated quality improvement systems to advance child and youth development.
Their approach is based in positive youth development research, and the desire to create a safe, supportive, and productive environment for youth. The approach is premised on the belief that it is a youth worker’s job to set up an environment for youth in which needs are met and learning is encouraged—to create a space in which young people can thrive. The pyramid provides a way to organize the many, many things a youth worker does to build a great experience for young people.
The Weikart Center coordinated the third phase of SCE’s Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Challenge, which focused on demonstrating how the Preparing Youth to Thrive content, training, performance measures and practices can be integrated into youth serving organizations across the country to improve SEL practice. They worked with five afterschool programs to produce case studies that highlighted how each organization integrated social and emotional learning supports.