CBO Schools: A Crucial Education-Youth Development Link: This initiative is to document and foster discussion on an emerging trend with significant implications for the education, positive development and successful outcomes of young people: community-based organizations founding and operating schools.

Community YouthMapping: This initiative involves young people gathering information by locating and documenting in a given locality, "places to go and things to do." These young people canvass neighborhoods block-by-block, in search of the programs, services, opportunities and caring adults available to them and their peers. In essence, "YouthMappers" become local ethnographers—asking and answering questions -- by providing from a youth-oriented perspective, insight into the communities in which they live, the culture of which they are a part, and the young people with whom they interact.

Expanding Educational Outcomes II: The goal of this initiative is to identify the strengths, commonalities, and differences between the School-to-Career (STC) andcommunity school collaboration (CSC) movements, and to build upon these factors to develop a strategy for working jointly to document their roles in improving educational outcomes. This work will be functional in up to five localities where both movements display a readiness and desire to take on the challenge.

Faith & Spirituality: This initiative is focused on producing a document which provides new information and appropriate language for incrased dialogue across the youth development field on the roles, contributions and value of Native American and Muslim faith and spirituality to the development of youth, particularly those at risk in Native American and African American communities.

Foster Care II: The goal of this project is to enhance our understanding of the role, impact and perspective responses of sexuality for children in foster care in order to promote dialogue between foster parents and youth. Specifically, the project will explore the universe of issues that should be included in discussions between foster youth and foster parents about sexuality, identify barriers that inhibit dialogue between foster youth and foster parents about sexuality: including the role of previous victimization and identify community "best practices" and "entry points" that facilitate dialogue for youth in the foster care system about sexuality.

Girls Inc. Feasibility Study: The goal of this project is to present a feasibility study resulting from a series of focus groups and interviews with social service providers and city stakeholders interested in expanding opportunities for young female adolescents.

Kellogg Youth Initiatives Partnerships Project: The Kellogg Youth Initiatives Partnerships (KYIP) project is an ambitious 20-year program being implemented in three Michigan sites: Calhoun County, home of the Foundation's headquarters in Battle Creek; Marquette and Alger Counties in the Upper Peninsula; and the catchment area of a North Detroit high school. The purpose of KYIP is to build partnerships between the Foundation and communities in the three sites to promote positive youth, adult and community outcomes related to youth development.

Promising Practices Bank of After-School Programs: The goal of this initiative is to create a process to identify and disseminate Promising Practices Bank(s) of After-School Programs.

As part of the Promising Practices in After School Initiative, the Center for Youth Development and Policy Research is conducting a telephone survey of after-school practitioners on their access to and use of information about successful practices. The Center for Youth Development and Policy Research will be using the results from this survey to (1) help develop a process by which promising practices in after school can be identified and shared with practitioners in an effective and meaningful way; and (2) to increase the quality of after-school programs by identifying and promoting practices that address both educational and youth development outcomes. For more information contact Project Director Suzanne LeMenestrel, slemenes@aed.org.

Transformational Community Development with Youth as Full Partners: This three-year initiative is a three-way collaboration between the Center, the National Network for Youth and the National 4-H Council. The purpose of this initiative is to create an integrated local program model that links youth and community development through civic engagement activities for young people.

Youth Development Mobilization This initiative is focused on helping to create an infrastructure at the local level—crossing the areas of policy, program and practice—to ensure long-term, institutional support for youth development. The Center and a diverse group of associates and partners are proposing to work intensively and strategically in specific communities while continuing to be opportunistic with an ever-expanding number of localities. The proposed strategies to accomplish the Mobilization goals are purposefully practical and intended to bridge communication gaps that currently exist between adults and youth and among adults at the national and local levels.

XYZ Membership Associations III: Moving Membership Forward: The "XYZ" local membership opportunities serve as a neutral cross-roads where young people, adults, and seniors serve on local advisory boards and share equal roles and responsibilities in promoting citizenship, increasing community involvement, and building a constituency of citizens that support the quality of opportunities for youth in their community. The goal of this project is to continue to provide technical assistance to and documentation of the five membership sites where an infrastructure for implementing local locally-based youth/adult membership associations has been initiated.