Healthy Lifestyle Guidance for Kids

The Child Center of NY, a family focused multiservice organization reaching more than 55,000 children, youth, and their family members each year across New York City, will provide afterschool lifeskills workshops to middle school student across Queens that emphasize healthy lifestyles, as voted upon by the community through the Participatory Budgeting process. Our strategy involves implementing our signature Steps to Success program at 12-15 public middle schools (and middle school-serving NYCHA Cornerstone Community Centers) across Queens. S2S is a unique youth development program that strengthens the six resiliency skills research links to school success, teaches effective goal setting behavior, and promotes healthy lifestyle practices that support physical and mental wellness. S2S involves four components: a) Risk Assessment across the six resiliency areas research suggests are most indicative of school and life success (two of which concentrate on physical/mental health and wellbeing); b) weekly resilency education classes/workshops; c) goal setting and ongoing tracking of progress/milestones (students select at least one academic and one health/wellness goal); and d) metorship, case management, and ongoing support for the most at-risk students by a dedicated staff member called a Youth Advocate. Our project will reach at least 700 middle schoolers across Queens and mesure success by improvements in resiliency skills (including those pertaining to physical/mental health and wellbeing) based on pre/post Resiliency Assessment results (with the goal of at lesat 85% of students showing improvements).

Implementing Organization: The Child Center of NY

Website: https://childcenterny.org/

Funding Amount: $280,000