This page is designed to help YOU by providing ACT for Youth and national toolkit and training materials. 

ACT for Youth Products:

ACT for Youth: Positive Youth Development Resource Manual  ACT for Youth offers an online (and fully downloadable) youth development training manual to use to educate community groups about positive youth development. The manual includes training activities with lesson plans/facilitation tips, handouts, brief power point presentations, and references to other resources.

Please Stand Up! is an interactive CD-ROM for middle and high school students, educators, parents and community members to help eradicate school violence by showing you the best way to handle a variety of dangerous and self-destructive situations. Vignettes include: conflict, bullying, hate, relationships, suicide, gangs and weapons. Click on the Please Stand Up! link above to connect with this interactive website, live videos and tour of materials from ACT for Youth Center of Excellence partner the New York State Center for School Safety. ACT for Youth COE also has 2 copies in our lending library for use by ACT community collaborations.

Materials from Other Organizations:

Effective and Promising Practices, a web page from the NYS Office of Children and Family Services Internet, is a resource for advancing programs and practices that are designed to achieve positive outcomes for the children, families, and communities of New York State. Topic areas include: development and measurement of outcomes, effective programs and practices, implementation issues, and funding considerations.

Youth Participation Guide: Assessment, Planning and Implementation: The Youth Participation Guide seeks to increase the level of meaningful youth participation in reproductive health (RH) and HIV/AIDS programming at an institutional and programmatic level. The target audience includes senior and middle management, program managers, staff involved in implementing activities, and youth who may be engaged at all levels of an organization's work.

Community Toolbox: The Tool Box provides over 6,000 pages of practical information to support your work in promoting community health and development. The core of the Tool Box is the "topic sections" that include practical guidance for the different tasks necessary to promote community health and development. Topics include leadership, strategic planning, community assessment, grant writing, and evaluation, among others. Each section includes a description of the task, step-by-step guidelines, examples, checklists of points to review, and training materials.

Program Evaluation and Resource Center (PERC): This comprehensive site offers tutorials and tools on program planning and evaluation. PERC also has a calendar of training events and lectures relevant to program planning and evaluation, and a nationwide database of people involved in youth development.

BDI Logic Models: A useful tool for designing, strengthening, and evaluating programs to reduce adolescent sexual risk-taking, pregnancy, HIV and other STDs or other youth development programs.

Partnerships For After-School Success Tool Kits: The National Collaboration for Youth (a coalition of more than forty national agencies, which together reach over 40 million youth annually) is pleased to provide the attached Partnerships for After-School Success toolkits.  The toolkits provide research supporting the need for school-CBO partnerships; successful strategies for creating and sustaining partnerships; and checklists and tools.  Though the information is similiar in both packets; one is specifically written for community-based organizations and the other is for local education agencies and state education agencies.  

Youth Development Guide: Engaging Young People in After School Programming. The Youth Development Guide provides specific and practical advice on strengthening individual staff practices and organizational policies in after school programs to support learning and young people's healthy development. Each chapter of the Guide offers descriptions of core youth development practices, provides hands on applications on how to encourage and deepen practice, and offers exercises and tools to use with staff members on site.

CommonAction offers the Washington Youth Voice Handbook, a publication that provides a clear map to the essentials of Youth Voice, including "What, Why, Where, When, and How" Youth Voice happens in diverse communities across Washington State. More than 50 programs, schools, and organizations are featured. The Handbook also includes 20+ Youth Voice workshop outlines that are carefully designed to increase the knowledge and ability of young people and adults and a Youth Voice Assessment exploring multiple aspects of action. You can download the guide at www.commonaction.org/publications.htm