It is a natural duty of the government and the civil society of a nation to protect its youth from deviation and ensure they meet their best potentiality, since they are the key resources of the future with boundless possibilities.
In an effort to es...
It is a natural duty of the government and the civil society of a nation to protect its youth from deviation and ensure they meet their best potentiality, since they are the key resources of the future with boundless possibilities.
In an effort to establish government-led welfare policies which aim to protect and raise juveniles in a wholesome environment, public youth centers are installed, and plans to utilize those centers have been sought. This implies that the youth center is not just a place to perform outside-school-activities, or merely protect teenagers, or provide standardized welfare, instead, it should be a public facility that helps juveniles to realize their potential egos and provide public services.
Government Youth Commission adopted and developed 'After School Academy' program, which this study is all about, to provide a social security network for unsupervised teenagers.
This study is to verify the effectiveness and necessity of the program by analyzing satisfaction of teenagers as well as that of supervisors.
Moreover, the study aims to provide data in relation with promoting active use and expanded operation of the program based on such analyzation results. The results can be summarized as following:
Taking a look at the effective side of After School Academy, the program seems to satisfy teenager's need. The teenage participants' life satisfaction has improved along with self-esteem and self-efficacy. The participating rates of various activities have also increased, illustrating the program's high effectiveness on changing juveniles for the better.
The participants were guaranteed of safe homecoming as well as good quality of meals, and they were offered opportunity to experience new things in weekend, all of which contributed to achieving the goal of protection and aid.
Satisfaction rates of the juvenile participants were further improved by focused educational supports for the students from low-income families. The program produced positive results including the fact that the longer the students have stayed in After School Academy the higher their academic grades and study time per day become.
However, supervisors' satisfaction rates were not as high as those of the students. Although the supervisors felt rewarded living with the students and watching their improvements, it seemed that they still have problem of labor condition, work environment, and job stability.
In conclusion, After School Academy of public youth center is a excellent program as it offers open services to local community. Yet the expansion of such superb service has been hindered by the deficiency of public facilities, government budget, local government's financial support, and the low life-satisfaction of supervisors.
After a serious consideration of what a public facility should provide for the teenagers, institutions have to be installed under a long term plan by the government and local entity for healthy upbringing of the youth, and programs are needed to be developed according to the students' needs, consequently establishing a user-oriented, active youth center with expanded purposes.