PUBLICATIONS

Scott H. Flamm Center for Afterschool Development

All Stars Project of New Jersey

By Gloria Strickland, VP Youth and Community Development - All Stars Project, Inc. and Douglas Balder

5 years after the Flamm Center for Afterschool Development opened in Newark and 20 years after the All Stars Project of New Jersey came to Newark, this report looks at the program, architecture, and the center’s success in Newark in creating a New Play for Newark, a developmental approach to afterschool and creating the city we want.

Centers for Afterschool Development are showcases

• As a free innovation program and incubator for the development of youth through the ASP performance-based programs, the afterschool development centers are entrepreneurial showcases for out-of-school developmental learning.

• The centers allow people to see our afterschool development model in physical space in the city, different from the program in action and written descriptions about the ASP. For many it is the primary way they experience our work.

• They are designed to provide a place for a social/cultural life experience that supports the development of young people as well as the adults who partner with them.

• The centers are a new building type, a developmental learning environment, a place in urban business and cultural centers where youth and adults, together, perform.

• As such, the centers add a deliberative and unique social/cultural urban experience to cities that builds bridges and new relationships.

Centers for Afterschool Development are bridges connecting poor youth to the city

• Helping young people feel that they belong to the broader city is critical to their growth and success.

• The sense of belonging instills in students the drive to complete school more than anything else.

• The centers create the experience of belonging in city centers where youth typically feel unwelcomed and build a bridge connecting youth to a city’s cultural, business and social institutions.