Community Investment & Environmental Justice

Photo Credit: Philadelphia Contemporary website photo for YAP pocket park located at the corner of 38th and Melon Streets.

Youth Ambassador Program Pilot Evaluation 
Funder: Philadelphia Contemporary 
Project Time Period: 2021

About the Youth Ambassador Program: The Youth Ambassador program is a high-impact place-based education program centered on environmental justice, civic engagement, and the arts for middle school youth with ties to the Mantua community in West Philadelphia. In partnership with Mantua Civic Association, Philadelphia Contemporary, and The Academy of Natural Sciences the program provides a hands-on approach of engaging middle school youth to work together in a meaningful way to shape their environment by utilizing the power of the arts.   

The Work: MAI completed a formative evaluation (including developing a program logic model) of the Youth Ambassador Program (YAP). This robust and developmental mixed-methods study employed multiple research activities to answer the study’s key research questions, including: program staff interviews, focus group with Youth Ambassadors, and training YAP’s teaching artists to administer a pre-and-post Youth Ambassador survey (designed in collaboration with the MAI team) focused on short-term, medium-term, and long-term outcomes associated with YAP’s logic model. This evaluation resulted in a number of deliverables accessible to YAP’s audiences, but as part of this evaluation, the MAI team collaborated with the YAP team and produced a one-page accessible infographic highlighting the key findings from the evaluation cycle to be used by the program team and participants as a tool to inform community members about the Youth Ambassador Program and the benefits of the program for the community.