In Miami, a former basketball coach created a comprehensive afterschool program to promote academic achievement and create pathways to college for students. Brandon Okpalobi founded the DIBIA DREAM Academy in 2014 when he noticed a lack of out-of-school-time opportunities for low-income youth of color. DREAM has since reached more than 2,200 children with afterschool and summer programming. Students receive free meals, play sports and engage in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) activities such as building mechanical lungs. “We don’t believe everyone will be a scientist or engineer, but they’ll think differently and critically about the things they do, and if they do that, that will help them along the path to becoming a successful adult,” Okpalobi told Miami Community Newspapers.
An afterschool and summer program situated at a screen-printing studio in Pittsburgh keeps teens safe while developing their career skills through the arts. In programs at Teen Studio Sto-Rox at the Father Ryan Arts Center, students learn skills including ceramics and dance and earn money by designing, screen-printing and selling t-shirts, posters and other items. Program leaders hope to transform the studio into a sustainable business that targets community members as customers. “We hope it provides career training and an economic opportunity for a lot of teens in the neighborhood,” Pete Spynda, director of arts and culture at Focus on Renewal, a local social services agency, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “They can have a stake in the business as we develop it. We’re using the arts as an easy entry to thinking about work.”
In Linden, New Jersey, the Soehl Middle School Century Summer STEM Academy combats summer learning loss by engaging students in daily STEM challenges, recreation programs, field trips and more. The free four-week academy is an extension of Soehl’s 21st Century Community Learning Centers afterschool program, which incorporates activities intended to stimulate socio-emotional growth. “There are still issues that linger through the summer where kids need individual counseling or small-group mediation,” director Isabella Scocozza told My Central Jersey. “And now we have a little more time to do that. It’s not like during the school year, where everything is a little more fast-paced.”
At the Matthew 25 Urban Farm in Cedar Rapids, Michigan, teens spent six weeks planting, weeding and harvesting produce to sell at a market and donate to food pantries. The Cultivate Hope Youth Development Program is a paid opportunity for teens to develop career and leadership skills through urban farming, social justice workshops and self-directed projects. The program intentionally recruits a diverse cohort so participants can benefit from each other’s perspectives. “We all have different characters out here and different opinions, we all came from different schools, we didn’t know each other,” participant Ali Juma told the Gazette. “But I learned how to communicate with people as we have been working together.”