A place to call home

by Hirsch, Barton Jay

"A Place to Call Home: After-School Programs for Urban Youth provides important evidence that after-school programs work. In this work, author Barton J. Hirsch discusses his research conducted over a four-year period at six Boys & Girls Clubs located in low-income, predominantly minority, urban neighborhoods. Hirsch shows that the culture of the after-school center meets the needs of urban youth by drawing on and replicating positive features of the youth's familial environment and peer group. Staff first engage and then socialize youth toward positive identities by means of recreational activities and wide-ranging mentoring relationships. These club environments, repeatedly referred to as a "second home" by participating youth, help youth thrive even though formal programs often fail to reach their full potential. A Place to Call Home documents the crucial support that after-school programs provide to urban youth in their passage to adulthood, while also challenging the programs to ri