STEP UP! creates educated, contributing, and successful citizens

K-12 STEAM education

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

The Los Angeles County, Fourth District is a dynamic and diverse community of more than two million residents. GAP services the communities of Harbor City/Gateway, San Pedro and Wilmington communities and has historically dealt, and still continue to struggle with the presence of gangs, graffiti, and youth violence. GAP’s service area falls in the highest justice equity need for service. The LA County fourth district has made a continuous investment in its youth to prevent them from joining gangs, and to eliminate the negative behaviors of gangs and gang culture. For over a century, LA County has dealt with violence in its communities, and has been coined the gang capital of the world. through the addition of The STEP UP! after school program at additional school site we will be providing the students and community a proven solution to address the community safety through gang prevention and by further edifying the students language and literacy.

The STEP UP! afterschool expanded learning programs provide services to students to increase their academic performance and to provide enrichment activities, such as our LIBERTY® anti-bullying program, physical education, our STEM Mobile Learning Vehicle, arts, music, dance, sports, homework completion, and tutoring assistance. The STEP UP! Program runs Mondays through Fridays from 2:30pm to 6:00pm during the school year. Advisors provide a positive and safe learning environment to students in the STEP UP! program, thereby allowing parents the comfort of knowing that their child is safe, learning and being taken care of. The grant funding will allow GAP to expand into addition elementary schools to provide the STEP UP! Program to other youth. GAP also provides its own self-contained mobile technology lab (STEM-MLV) Students With Accessible Technology Mobile Learning Vehicle. The STEM-MLV is equipped with up to 30 Apple iPads loaded with educational software, and wireless Internet capability. The lab rotates between sites weekly his lab would address the income inequity gap in the harbor area by providing the student access to technology they do not possess at home.

The STEP UP! afterschool expanded learning programs provides a durable platform of innovation and student achievement. Los Angeles County will be different through the increase of social services for the community that the program will serve providing a safe space for students to learn and achieve success in the K-12 curriculum, keeping these students off the streets during after school hours, providing parents with expanded social networks that can support students facing income inequities that do not normally have access to private tutors or communities where they can receive safe environments to increase learning. Long term STEP UP! will address the barriers that our community youth face with achieving critical educational milestones and future economic mobility by providing access to learning opportunities that even the playing field for the communities children. The K-12 educational enrichment will provide long term perspectives for addressing immediate and long term needs.

The STEP UP! program has been successfully implemented in three local elementary schools and through data collected from pre and post school year program evaluations completed by school staff, parents, STEP UP! staff the robust data is evaluated using a mixed method of qualitative and quantitative data to examine GAPs implementation, feasibility, and effectiveness of the program. The impact is further measured through the use of in-class room observations, surveys, and the exploration of the data collected. Factors that are impactful to mention are the association between the program and the reduction of gang involvement, improvement in students academics, positive behavioral changes. This data is used to generate robust evidence to strengthen GAPs empirical foundation and produce a rigorous impact evaluation plan that includes advisory boards comprised of school administration, parents, community leaders, and students.