Organized after-school activities promote positive youth development across a range of outcomes. To be most effective, organized activities need to meet high-quality standards. The eight features of quality developed by the National Research Council's Committee on Community-Level Programs for Youth have helped guide the field in this regard. However, these standards have largely been defined in terms of universal developmental needs, and do not adequately speak to the growing ethnic and racial diversity within the United States, which is further complicated by issues of power and social class differences. Given U.S. population shifts and after-school funding priorities, the time has come to consider new ways to provide organized after-school activities that are responsive to youth's culture and everyday lives. The goal of this article is to explore how we can help ensure that afterschool activities are culturally responsive and address the specific needs of the youth who participate in these activities. Based on theory and empirical evidence, we provide proposed practices of cultural responsiveness for each of the eight features of quality for program structure and staff. The article

Are Latino adolescents' friendships an untapped resource for academic achievement or perhaps one of the reasons why these youth struggle academically? Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 6782; 7th through 12th graders; 52.9 % female), we examined whether the process of Latino students' school belonging mediated the relationships between the context of friendships (i.e., friendship network indicators) and their academic outcomes (i.e., a context-process-outcomes model), and tested whether the process-context link varied by friends' characteristics (i.e., GPA and problem behavior; social capital). Moreover, we tested whether all relationships varied across the four largest Latino subgroups in the U.S. (i.e., Mexican, Central/South American, Puerto Rican, and Cuban). Our findings indicate that being nominated as a friend by peers and perceiving to have friends exerted both direct effects on school belonging in all but one of the Latino ethnic samples (i.e., Puerto Rican samples) and indirect effects on academic achievement in the full Latino, Mexican, and Central/South American samples. As such, school belonging was more likely to explain the links between academic achievement with nominations by peers as a friend and perceived friends than with having close-knit friendship groups. However, having a close-knit group of average or low-achieving friends predicted more school belonging for Mexican youth, but less school belonging for Cubans. Our findings suggest that friendships may be particularly beneficial for the school belonging process of highly marginalized groups in the U.S. (i.e., Mexican-origin).

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant disruption in the lives of millions of people, including children and adolescents. Youth out-of-school time (OST) programs are essential ecological assets and their disruption during the pandemic may have a major impact on youth developmental pathways. Youth programs are one of the primary ways to promote positive youth development (PYD) and, in turn, develop healthy and thriving young adults who contribute positively to society. The pandemic raises the question of how to sustain developmentally oriented forms of youth leisure in times of crisis and, especially, how to support youth with few resources. Although there is considerable scientific evidence regarding the promotion of PYD through OST programs (e.g., sport, clubs, youth groups), public health initiatives to control the pandemic also curtail the delivery of such programs. Nevertheless, research on youth programs can be applied to help support PYD during the pandemic. In this commentary, we review key elements contributing to the effectiveness of youth development programs and provide ideas for how to sustain, adapt, and create these elements and bring them into unstructured leisure settings in the face of the pandemic. In doing so, we highlight particular challenges to implementation, surmise who may be most at risk, and present potential opportunities afforded by the unique situation. Throughout, we highlight innovative examples of adaptation exhibited in affected communities. We conclude with a call to action for researchers and practitioners to unite efforts to support PYD through leisure even in the face of crisis.

Organized activities have been found to provide positive experiences for Latino adolescents to develop confidence and learn critical life skills; however, these programs are sometimes a context where youth encounter negative experiences related to ethnic/racial microaggressions (ERMs). This qualitative study explores the types of ERMs that Mexican-origin parents and adolescents encountered in their organized activities experience. Parents were mainly concerned about SB-1070 and the associated law enforcement practices that posed a threat to transporting their children to and from the organized activity site. Adolescents reported that they encountered overt (e.g., ethnic teasing) as well as covert forms of discriminatory behavior

Youth sport is a key developmental context for many reasons, including the opportunities it provides for building relationships with peers and its potential to support character development. Peers can influence adolescent sport experiences and shape their motivations, and different peer motivational climates may differentially support athlete character. Established models identify different dimensions of peer motivational climate, yet these models do not describe how aspects of peer climate may align with character. We therefore assess profiles of peer motivational climate in relation to a multi-dimensional practitioner-developed theoretical model for character development through sport. Participants were 655 adolescent athletes from the greater Boston area, in the United States. Athletes perceiving a mastery-involved peer climate, even with high intra-team competition, were most likely to exhibit positive character attributes at the three levels of character assessed: themselves, their teammates, and the game. This study also demonstrates the utility of practitioner-developed models for adolescent research.Peer influence becomes more important as youth enter adolescence and, in youth sports settings, peer acceptance and friendship have the potential to translate into motivation, commitment, and enjoyment (e.g., Weiss & Smith, 2002). Motivated athletes who are committed to, and enjoy participating in, their sport are more likely to continue playing (Balish, McLaren, Rainham, & Blanchard, 2014), and therefore more likely to reap the benefits associated with participation in youth sport (e.g., Gould & Carson, 2008). Thus, it is important to understand and support positive peer climates within youth sport.In addition, sport participation may contribute to the development of character attributes when the sport context is supportive and provides good role models for moral behavior (Bredemeier & Shields, 1994). Given the aforementioned importance of peer influence in adolescence in general, and in youth sport in particular, in this study we explore the potential links between peer climate and the extent to which adolescent athletes exhibit character. This research draws on, integrates, and extends existing literature on peer motivational climates and character development in sport, using a practitioner-developed multidimensional model.