Pathways to Your Future is a college and career readiness program for youth in Grades 9 through 12. The program’s curriculum provides youth with resources and opportunities to develop knowledge and learn skills that help them align their sparks with potential careers, while exploring various pathways to enter the workforce. The family component includes a pre-program orientation, a financing and budgeting workshop, and take-home materials. Latino students made up 71% of the study participants. Retrospective pre- and post-program surveys were administered to youth and parents/guardians. Results indicated that the program equipped youth participants with the knowledge and skills to plan and manage their education and career goals, prepared them for a successful post-secondary educational experience and/or entry into the workforce, and increased the number of participants who planned to attend a post-secondary institution. Few gender differences were found. Findings suggest the program increased participating parents’ knowledge, skills, and involvement in their children’s college and career aspirations and plans. The results pointed to the importance of a holistic approach to college and career readiness that involves the youth and their parents nested in a positive youth development model.

Evaluation is a key component to learning about the effectiveness of a program. This article provides descriptive statistics of the newly developed National 4-H Common Measures (science, healthy living, citizenship, and youth development) based on data from 721 California 4-H youth. The measures were evaluated for their reliability and validity of individual items and overall measures using exploratory factor analysis. The measures overall appear to assess what they are intended to assess, but there are several methodological issues, such as cross-loading items and low variance. Recommendations for scale refinement and modifications are made.

Professionals in Extension who develop intercultural competence are better prepared to meet the needs of multicultural populations. This article addresses University of California Extension's formation of an intercultural competence professional development initiative. We describe our use of an integrated conceptual framework that includes Hammer's Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) and Kotter's eight-step organizational change process to institutionalize the initiative. IDI pretest and posttest results indicate that California 4-H professionals are more culturally competent. The impact of the initiative also is reflected in the significant growth (151% increase) in Latino youth participation in 4-H. We provide recommendations for replicating our effort.

The RealiTy UC ANR understands the following:• Positive youth development programs present an important opportunity to support ethnic and racial identity of Latino youth development.

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