Targeted Outreach - Governor's Office of Crime Control & Prevention ...

4 Targeted Outreach
place-based). Thus, the GITTO target youth know
that they are in a program or receiving services
aimed at helping them get out of the gang lifestyle
and improve their life circumstances.
How GPTTO and GITTO Differ from the
Typical Boys & Girls Club Approach
To implement either the GPTTO or GITTO model,
Clubs must shift their overall philosophy to include
community mobilization, recruitment, programming
and case management goals. These are not simple
“add-on” programs, such as a new literacy, life skills
or basketball activity might be. Implementing
GPTTO or GITTO at a Club changes the culture of
the Club—how it works with other agencies, how it
thinks about recruitment and the youth it serves,
how it designs and implements programming, how
staff interact with youth and youth’s parents, and the
level of case management documentation maintained
for individual youth (i.e., tracking the youth’s
progress in the Club and in the domain of the
youth’s life outside the Club).
GITTO is even more different from the usual Boys &
Girls Club approach: the project is developed over
time in concert with key players in the community
who work with gang-involved youth. It provides a
more intensive, intervention or service-oriented
experience in order to address the greater needs of
the intervention youth. Boys & Girls Clubs have generally
been more prevention-oriented; GITTO takes
a step in a new direction.
Because these are community-based and site-based
prevention and intervention strategies, Clubs differ
in their approaches. Generally, they followed the
same basic youth development strategies and four
program components (i.e., community mobilization,
recruitment, programming/mainstreaming and case
management). To provide the reader with a better
understanding of the commonalities and differences
among prevention and intervention Clubs and the
strategies they developed to work with youth, summary
descriptions of three intervention sites and
three prevention sites are included in Appendix A.
An Optimal Setting
Boys & Girls Clubs provide an optimal setting for
testing both gang prevention and intervention
approaches. The Clubs served youth across the country
for more than 140 years, historically in disadvantaged
urban neighborhoods. In the last several
decades, the Clubs have expanded to public housing
developments. By establishing Clubs in the heart of
areas with few resources for youth, BGCA has, as its
slogan indicates, provided safe places for youth to
join and engage in “a positive place for kids.”
Because local Boys & Girls Clubs have existed in
many of their communities for decades, they have a
history and experience serving youth who are disengaged
from school, have been in trouble, and are not
connected to positive supports and resources.
Indeed, a 1997 survey of five Boys & Girls Clubs
found that 54 percent of the youth ages 10 to 18
served by the Clubs had one or more serious risk factors
that could be associated with negative long-term
outcomes (Kotloff, Wahhab and Arbreton, 1997).
Another reason that Clubs may be effective in reaching
and serving youth at risk of gang involvement or
already involved in gangs is that many Clubs are
located in areas identified with high rates of gang
activity. As such, they are in a prime spot to reach out
to those youth and offer easily accessible services,
which is crucial because transportation issues can
often be a major impediment (see Quinn, 1999).
Further, Boys & Girls Clubs provide an existing infrastructure
in terms of staffing, funding and facilities.
New strategies for serving youth can be integrated
into this infrastructure and managed with comparatively
little additional operational cost.
Finally, findings from previous evaluations of Boys &
Girls Clubs and programs they have developed and
initiated provide evidence of Clubs’ potential to play
a positive role in the lives of the youth they serve and
their communities. In the study of five Boys & Girls
Clubs noted earlier, youth ages 10 to 18 were receiving
important developmental experiences through
their participation at the Clubs, particularly in the
areas of adult support, belonging, and the opportunity
to engage in challenging and interesting activities—positive
experiences that are linked to positive
long-term outcomes for youth. An evaluation of the
Smart Moves drug and alcohol awareness program
found positive effects of the presence of a Boys &