Youth Empowerment Program (YEP)

The goals of the Youth Empowerment Program (YEP) are to educate and develop life skills by developing the 5C’s: competency, character, confidence, connections and compassion. This will be accomplished through a 14-week program designed to prepare 8th grade students for high school and beyond.

PROGRAM OUTLINE
Week 1- Introduction to YEP
Week 2- Goal-Setting
Week 3- Preparing for High School
Week 4- Introduction to Programs for Support (e.g., TSTM/STEM/TRIO)
Week 5- Personal Style & Forming Values
Week 6- Responsible Behavior (Drug/Sexual Behaviors/Abuse)
Week 7- Mental Health
Week 8- Healthy Body
Week 9- Healthy Choices (Pro-social Activities)
Week 10- Community Service/Volunteering
Week 11- Civic Awareness: School Board/City Council
Week 12- Money Sense: Acquiring/budgeting/investing
Week 13- Money sense: Banking/new money internet options
Week 14- Wrap Up: New Skills/New behaviors New Knowledge Review

The 5 C’s Definitions

Competence – Positive view of one’s actions in specific areas, including social, academic, cognitive, health, and vocational.

Confidence – An internal sense of overall positive self-worth and self-efficacy. A feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities.

Connection – Positive bonds with people and institutions that are reflected in exchanges between the individual and his or her peers, family, school, and community and in which both parties contribute to the relationship.

Character – Respect for societal and cultural norms, possession of standards for
correct behaviors, a sense of right and wrong (morality), and integrity. The mental
and moral qualities distinctive to an individual.

Caring/Compassion – A sense of sympathy and empathy for others. Sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.

Researchers have theorized that young people whose lives incorporated these Five Cs would be on a
developmental path that results in the development of a “Sixth C” – Contributions to self, family,
community, and to the institutions of a civil society.