Preparing Youth to Thrive is an online guide of promising practices for promoting SEL in youth-serving programs. Jointly developed by the Susan Crown Exchange (SCE) and the David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality in the US, this field guide offers information on how out-of-school programs can intentionally promote social and emotional skill development in youth. Organized into six skill areas– emotion management, empathy, teamwork, responsibility, initiative, and problem solving, the guide offers staff practices and student experiences (backed by relevant research) that can help promote this skill in their programs. The guide is available as an interactive online website, and also as a guidebook you can download for free.

These promising practices and accompanying examples come from a study of eight exemplary out-of-school programs from seven cities in the US, programs that have a commitment to SEL and a proven track record of working with vulnerable and at-risk adolescents. Conducted by the SCE and the David P. Weikart Center in 2014, the goal of this study was to identify specific practices and approaches to SEL that made these programs effective, and that can be replicated at any other youth-serving program.