The YALPE Resource Kit is designed to help youth-serving organizations enhance the quality of their programs. Specifically, to help adults and youth:

  • Strengthen the quality of youth-adult partnerships and youth voice in program decision-making, and
  • Strengthen the quality of developmental opportunities, relationships, and emotional supports offered to program participants.

Organizations can focus on some or all of these aspects of program quality, depending on their interest and need. Staff and youth can also adapt the assessment process to explore additional issues. 
YALPE RESOURCES:

More Information and Order Form 

User's Guide

Frequently Asked Questions

View Sample Materials Questions from the 4 Surveys, Report Template

Need Assistance? Contact act4youth@cornell.edu or call 607.255.7736 

For ADDITIONAL RESOURCES - Engaging Youth in Decision Making:  

Research Based Issue Briefs:

1. Promising practices and impacts of youth engagement
2. Essential experiences and promising practices
3. Creating the conditions for youth-adult partnerships
4. Youth participation in research and evaluation

A newsletter series for parents, please click here.

Youth and Adult Leaders for Program Excellence: A Practical Guide for Program Assessment and Action Planning (the YALPE Resource Kit) is designed for groups that are seeking to promote positive youth development through strategies of youth participation, youth activism, youth voice and youth-adult partnership across a full range of contexts...from after-school programs, to community-based organizations, to residential settings. The tools and methods are grounded in research on youth development and are user-friendly for both youth and adults. The YALPE Resource Kit is most appropriate for programs that are actively seeking to improve their services, and which perceive youth as being key actors/partners in that process.

This resource kit guides staff and youth through five phases of assessment and program improvement. Phase 1: Planning and preparing to conduct a program assessment. Phase 2: Collecting and compiling data. Phase 3: Analyzing and understanding the data. Phase 4: Sharing the results with the group. Phase 5: Action planning and finalizing the report. The YALPE Resource Kit includes four sets of assessment tools and templates which enable user-friendly data entry, data analyses and report writing. (Please see sample questions from each tool and the report template in blue box at right.) 

Poll: There is a good balance of power between youth and adults in our group
 

Developed by: Linda Camino, Shepherd Zeldin, Carrie Mook and Cailin O'Connor