Keys to Quality Youth Development

"Hands-on activities, appropriate adult mentors and community service ..."

The Massapequa Mustangs promise is to promote positive youth development and plan quality experiences with young people. Young people will learn better and participate more fully when they feel physically and emotionally safe. The environment provided by the Long Islansd Jester Girls United will encourage honesty, trust, and respect among all youth and adults.

With The Massapequa Mustangs:

• Youth develop caring and trusting relationships. Youth and adults learn together and respect one another.
  
  
• Youth experience success by completing activities appropriate for their stage of development and preferred style of learning. Youth set goals and celebrate accomplishments.
  
  
• Youth are offered new experiences and opportunities to enjoy life. They learn and grow from successes and failures.
  
  
• Youth are encouraged to try new things and learn about themselves. As a result they discover and practice their interests and skills, test their independence, and take control of their lives.
  
  

Words Of Wisdom...

"Kids can walk around trouble, if there is some place to walk to and someone to walk with."
Tito, Urban Sanctuaries, p. 219.

To grow and learn to optimum capacity in healthy ways and to function successfully in the adult world, young people benefit from opportunities to:

• feel a sense of safety and structure
  
  
• experience active participation, group membership, and belonging
  
  
• develop self-worth achieved through meaningful contribution
  
  
• experiment to discover self, gain independence, and gain control over one's life
  
  
• develop significant relationships with peers and adults
  
  
• discuss conflicting values and formulate their own
  
  
• feel the pride and accountability that come with mastery
  
  
• expand the capacity to enjoy life and know that success is possible
  
  

"Youth development ought not to be viewed as a happenstance matter. While children can, and often do, make the best of difficult circumstances, they cannot be sustained and helped to grow by chance arrangements or makeshift events. Something far more intentional is required: a place, a league, a form of association, a gathering of people where value is placed on continuity, predictability, history, tradition, and a chance to test out new behaviors."

The Massapequa Mustangs