A Fresh Approach to Learning

Engaging young people in educational activities outside of school can be challenging. After spending a long day in the classroom, kids mostly want to play and be with their friends. However, academic success is critical to their future ability to attend college, find a career and enter the workforce. This is especially true for youth who come from disadvantaged circumstances, as do many Boys & Girls Club members.

That's why Boys & Girls Clubs of America developed Project Learn, which provides fun, interesting ways to reinforce the skills and knowledge young people learn in school. Project Learn is based on research by Dr. Reginald Clark that found students do much better in school when they spend their non-school hours engaged in fun, educational activities.

Project Learn emphasizes the importance of infusing learning into all aspects of a Boys & Girls Club. For instance, a basketball game or cooking class can provide excellent opportunities for improving math skills through keeping score and measuring ingredients. Games like Scrabble help develop kids' cognitive skills while being fun at the same time.

Through Project Learn, Club staff use all areas and programs in the Club to create opportunities for these high-yield learning activities, which include leisure reading, writing activities, discussions with knowledgeable adults, helping others, and incentives to reward Club members for positive academic participation.

Project Learn also emphasizes parent involvement and collaboration between Club and school professionals as critical factors in creating the best after-school learning environment for Club members. Extensively field tested, Project Learn has been proven to boost the academic performance of Club members. In fact, 30 months after Project Learn was implemented in 1999, an evaluation by Columbia University found that kids participating in Project Learn not only increased their grade point averages by 11 percent, but also had markedly higher school scores than youth participating in other after-school programs.