A few years ago, the national Cooperative Extension Service was awarding
grants to 4-H offices working with "at-risk" youth. I don't know if they ever
put together any sort of library of their research, but it might be work
checking it out. Contact the US Dept of Agriculture.

They did sponsor some conferences on the topic and I remember one speaker in
particular. She was working with "hip-hop" youth at the extreme end of the
"at-risk" spectrum and she found that the more "at-risk" the youth were, the
more they required mentor/advisors who closely matched their ethnic,
socio-economic and even age background. The hip-hop teens didn't respect
people in their twenties or thirties who originally came from the same
background. They felt that these adults didn't understand how the situations
in their neighborhoods had changed. To work effectively with the hip-hop
kids, this program had to find advisor/mentors who were around 18-21 years
old.

 Of course, there is a whole gradient of "at-risk"--everything from kids from
middle class background who happen to be minority and consequently
underrepresented in certain areas to kids who are experiencing difficulty in
school (truancy, poor grades) to kids who have begun doing illegal acts
(theft, drugs) to kids who are convicted and serving time.

My particular program focused on encouraging African-Americans (especially
low-income ones) in science and engineering by running hands-on science clubs
led by volunteer scientists. I could see the difference between academically
interested kids with supportive parents and those without. For the kids with
supportive parents, race was less of an issue than the gender of the
scientist or the topic they were leading. On the other hand, when we worked
with a basketball/tutoring program, the kids were very disrespectful of an
elderly white male who was actually doing a educationally good hands-on
lesson while they listening avidly to a middle-aged black man who was
lecturing (no hands-on) about his work as an elevator mechanic.

The Association of Science and Technology Centers has been coordinating work
and research regarding teens in museums for over a decade. They have a great
website with lots of good info available. Check out www.astc.org. It might be
worth calling ASTC, as they don't share all their YouthALIVE materials on the
website.

Hope this helps.

Jeannine Finton
Education Consultant

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