Community Outreach Programs

Community outreach programs link organizations with external partners to achieve mutually valued goals for targeted populations. Two intertwining dimensions characterize community outreach. One dimension focuses on connecting organizations that can provide complementary resources and supports for specified populations. The other dimension focuses on building culturally responsive and community-responsive bridges to these populations to better address their needs. In the context of out-of-school learning (OSL), community outreach is a strategy to ensure that children and adolescents, especially those in underserved communities, are provided with developmentally appropriate activities supervised by caring adults during nonschool hours. As such, community outreach is a means to expand the social capital available to young people and their families, which is linked to in-school and out-of-school success. This entry describes the relationship ...