Age range

Website: www.mocha.org/project

yield/index.html

Mission/Goals: The Museum of Children's Art is committed to ensuring that the arts are a fundamental part of the lives of all children. The goals of Project YIELD are to create a safe and supportive after school learning environment for children and youth living in West Oakland, and to provide high quality programs that support their creative, academic, personal, and social development as they grow toward adulthood. Our objectives are to: 1) Create a safe learning environment for 250 Cole School youth, ages 5-16, for 36 school year weeks; 2) Provide opportunities for youth to develop meaningful positive relationships with peers and adults; 3) Provide youth positive experiences in group participation and opportunities to build leadership skills; 4) Provide youth with ways to contribute to their community; and 5) Support young people in developing strong creative, personal, and social skills through the arts and academic support.

Notes: Project YIELD's program components include an after-school arts program (with 45 minutes for homework and 2 hours of arts instruction), a leadership program for teens and parents, community benefit and involvement through public art (involving youth in work to strengthen the collaboration between youth and community and to educate the public about the positive role youth play in defining community), and academic enrichment (through an after-school Learning Center where students attend the center for homework assistance, tutoring, arts-based academic enrichment programs, and mentoring). MOCHA is a member of Fireseed, the 21st Century Community Learning Collaborative (CCLC) in West Oakland that is developing comprehensive and school-linked after-school programs for youth at West Oakland schools. MOCHA has been recognized for its exemplary youth programs through the receipt of the following awards: the Coming Up Taller Award from The President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (2003); the San Francisco Foundation’s Helen Crocker Russell Award for excellence in service to the community (1996); Bank of America's Community Catalyst Award for excellence in work in under-served communities (1998); and MOCHA’s Discover Art Program has been recognized as an exemplary model for arts education and school reform by ArtsVision, a national research firm, the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC) and Harvard University’s assessment study of arts organizations.

Source(s): www.mocha.org; www.guidestar.org

Type of Evaluation: Outcomes Monitoring.

Objective: The Oakland Fund for Children and Youth (OFCY) evaluation was designed to assess service provision and the effects of services provided by organizations that received grants from OFCY. Please note that the following summary focuses on evaluation findings regarding the effects on children, rather than on service provision.

Impact/Outcomes: Child- and parent-reported satisfaction with services remained constant between fall 2003 and spring 2004 (86.0% versus 85.8% for children and 90.9% at both times for parents). The percentages of children and program staff reporting improvement across the seven developmental assets were also nearly constant in the fall and spring (68.8% and 70.3% for child reports and 84.9% at both times for staff), but the percentages decreased for parent
ratings (80.2% to 74.9%). Similarly,
the percentage of children reporting
improvement across the eight areas of
attitudes, skills, knowledge, and behaviors
remained about the same (66.6% to 67.0%);
however, the percentages decreased for parent ratings (80.7% to 72.3%) and increased for staff ratings (89.2% to 93.0%). Staff ratings of children's expectations of themselves increased somewhat (78.6% to 80.6%), but their ratings of children's participation in home, school, and community declined (81.6% to 78.3%). 63% of children improved their school attendance more than the average improvement of OUSD students; 59% improved their GPA by more than the average improvement of OUSD students.