News

A couple of weeks ago, I set out to do something that I have been putting off for a long time—driving over to Alexandria, Virginia, to go through all of the old NAA files that have been in storage since we moved offices from Boston, Massachusetts, to Washington, D.C., around 2008.

When the Robert Bowne Foundation closed its doors on December 31, 2015, it was important to the board and staff members to share the lessons they had learned as a result of their 25 years of work with practitioners, organizations and other funders interested in building the capacity of out-of-school time (OST) programs.

Today, girls in the United States are far less likely than boys to achieve the recommended amounts of physical activity—by age 14, girls are dropping out of sports at two times the rate of boys. Research shows, however, that girls and women who play sports have higher levels of confidence and self-esteem, lower levels of depression, a more positive body image, and overall higher states of psychological well-being.

Emerging best practices in out-of-school-time (OST) are well aligned with the goals of social and emotional learning (SEL), but few SEL programs are designed for OST environments.