
Recruiting Specific Youth
- Look at your Data: Data such as survey responses, test scores, grades, behavioral referrals, absentee rates can all help inform which students you want to specifically recruit for an activity.
- Ask for referrals from other Staff: They may be aware of needs that you don’t know about. Also, youth are most likely engaged with adults they have a great relationship.
- Target Specific populations: If you are in a school-based setting or another setting with designated populations, you can target specific populations. For example, if you have an activity geared towards English Learners you can look at which students are in that program during the school day. You may be able to come to school-day classes to promote the activity.
- Offer incentives: Food, small giveaways or culminating parties and trips are great incentives to get youth in the door and to keep them coming back.
Get the Word Out!
- Program Schedule: posted and distributed in multiple places
- Flyers and Brochures
- Get Youth to Recruit their Peers: If you can peek a student’s interest it can help give them the security they need to attend if they are allowed to bring a friend.
- Go Directly to the Parents and Families: Students are very likely to attend if their parents want them in your program. Click here for more on parental engagement.
- Keep non-program staff informed: teachers, administrators, counselors, non-profit and community center staff should be up-to-date on your program. They are working with the same population and can only refer youth. Reception staff are often the first line of communication to families and community.
Mix It Up
- Programing is reflective the needs of your community.
- Offer a good mix of academics, youth development, physical activities, arts, community service, leadership opportunities and career and technical education.
- Programing changes to offer new opportunities.
- In alignment with the school day, but uniquely distinct from the school day.
Resources
- Attracting and Sustaining Youth Participation in After School Programs: From the Harvard Family Research Project, this article outlines successful approaches to building and sustaining youth participation in out-of-school time programs.
- City Strategies to Engage Older Youth in Afterschool Programs: From The National League of Cities and the Wallace Foundation, this strategy guide provides cities with guidance on how to create enriching, relevant and supportive out-of-school time environments for middle and high school youth, guidance on maximizing scarce local resources and examples from small, midsized and large cities
- Getting It Right: Strategies for Out-of-School Success: This report offers recruitment strategies, including targeting older and high-risk youth.
- Google Calendar: An excellent free tool for creating online schedules.
- Motivating Middle School Students to Attend Afterschool Programs: This article from the SEDL Letter Volume XX, Number 1, April 2008, Making the Most of Middle School, examines the motivating factors in getting middle school students to attend out-of-school programming.
- The Pennsylvania Older Youth Out-of-School Time Study: A Practitioner's Guide to Promising Practices for Recruiting and retaining older Youth. This report combines results from a 2010 survey of youth programs in Pennsylvania with findings from a literature review to provide practitioners with information on best practices for recruiting and retaining older youth.