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1-023 - Designing Effective Organized Activities to Foster Youth Character: Perspectives from USA, Rwanda, Ghana, and Scotland

Thu, March 21, 9:30 to 11:00am, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 3, Room 330

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Organized after-school activities and programs are championed as contexts for positive youth development. One critical aspect of positive youth development is youth’s character virtues, including having a strong moral center, understanding right from wrong, helping others, and always striving for one’s best. Organized after-school activities have many affordances that theorized to support youth’s character development including youth empowerment, intrinsic motivation, positive relationships with adults, and opportunities to matter. Recent work suggests that the quality of organized activities determines whether youth grow in positive ways as result of attending these activities. This symposium brings together experts who will discuss the active ingredients that make organized activities more effective in fostering youth’s character development in the USA, Rwanda, Ghana, and Scotland. The first presentation sets the foundation for the symposium by providing a critical review of the literature on the affordances of organized activities that support the development of youth’s moral character. The second and third presentations provide empirical tests of the extent to which these affordances are associated with youth’s character development and outcomes in two African countries. The final presentation focuses on lessons learned concerning program implementation of a Scottish program, such as the importance of program adaptation and being responsive to youth, for organized activities around the world.

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