Press release:
For middle-school youth living in the Hillcrest community of Asheville, there is now a place after schoolto hang out, learn, explore identity, build self-esteem, study, play sports, and participate in many other enriching activities. lt’s called the Hillcrest Afterschool Program. Since October of this year, the program operates every weekday after school, creating an environment that helps local teens learn important life skills for building their future.
Based on best practice research for after-school programs, the program engages the
teens physically through sports and games, intellectually through tutoring and fun academic projects, socially through team building and community service, emotionally through group discussion and personal exploration, and artistically through creative expressions. And they get a great nutritional snack.
The Hillcrest Afterschool program achieves success daily as these youth mature, learn about themselves and others, improve their school performance, and build the criticalthinking skills that will help them for the rest of their lives. lt is part of United Way’s Asheville Buncombe Middle Grades Network, which is dedicated to ensuring that all middle school students receive the supports necessary to thrive in their middle and high school years and beyond.
The Hillcrest Afterschool program is a collaboration between the Women’s Wellbeing and Development Foundation (WWD-F) and Youth Transformed for Life (YTLI. WWD-F has been running the Hillcrest Resource Center for four years and YTL directs the GRACE for Teens program and College prep courses that assists students coming from low-income households. They are currently raising funds for the program at a crowdfunding site. For more information, please contact WWD-F’s office at (828) 255-8777 or email staff@wwd-f’org’
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