Our Work

The Center for Youth and Communities is learning and evaluation partner for FIRST Global, a US-based non-profit that organizes and operates a yearly FIRST® Global Challenge event, emphasizing the importance, excitement, and applicability of STEM education. CYC worked with FIRST Global to develop their logic model and evaluation plan and is currently engaged in a multi-year study examining the cohort of students who participated in the 2024 FIRST Global Challenge, collecting survey data from students on over 190 teams across the world and their parents/guardians to assess the relationship between FIRST Global team participation, STEM outcomes (i.e., interest, identity, school, employment) and broader “world citizen” and entrepreneurship outcomes.

The Center for Youth and Communities is engaged in the second phase of an evaluation and learning partnership with funder Accelerate the Future to study the Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) program currently based at Framingham State University (FSU). Working with the three initial pilot organizations and extending to more, the Center team is learning about the experiences of the coordinator programs and providing a learning framework for the LMHC future growth, sustainability, and impact.

FIRST^® Longitudinal Study

For nearly 20 years, the Center served as the evaluation partner for FIRST^®, a national organization that promotes involvement in STEM through after-school robotics competitions. The initial Center study was a retrospective study of participants in the FIRST^® Robotics Competition that tracked alumni from 20 teams into college and compared them on key measures, such as college course-taking and majors, internships, and community service involvement, to a matched set of students drawn from a national US Department of Education database. Subsequent studies have focused on FIRST^® Robotics programs targeted to underserved communities, the FIRST LEGO^®  League program (for middle school students), and the FIRST Tech Challenge^®  program, a new high school initiative, with a focus on both program outcomes and implementation in in-school and after-school settings.

The Center completed the 10-year, quasi-experimental longitudinal study aimed at assessing long term program impacts on student involvement in STEM education and careers.  The outcomes were particularly strong for first women.

Read the final report of the 10-year FIRST^® Longitudinal Study here.

Read more about the FIRST^® Longitudinal Study here.

The Center for Youth and Communities led a multi-year, USAID funded project in Ethiopia, Integrated Youth Activity – Kefeta. In partnership with AMREF Health Africa, the Center team focused on capacity building to strengthen student career readiness at 22 Ethiopian universities and Technical Vocational (TVET) colleges.

The goals of the project: to enhance higher education system supports to increase youth employability through market-relevant skills development, to develop capacity-building within universities and TVET colleges to improve academic excellence and expand career development services for their students; and to identify opportunities for meaningful employer engagement in higher education.

The Center conducted a pilot study to explore the process of obtaining SSI and SSDI benefits, focusing on who receives benefits and learning about the challenges faced by the people who apply and are denied benefits or those who do not complete the application process. Through qualitative and quantitative data collected from national sources and workforce development board partners, the first year of the study paved the way for another phase focused on mitigating challenges benefit workers identified in the application process.

Smart from the Start (Smart) is a family support and community engagement organization that provides a wide array of programming, tools and resources, designed to meet families where they are and engage with them across the lifespan.

The Center began working with Smart on project Phase I to help digitize community needs assessment survey responses and interviews with Smart stakeholders. The Center continued the partnership with Phase 2, a three-year evaluation of Smart to address the challenges highlighted in Phase I and build the capacity of Smart to assess its programming and support program and resource development.