Rationale

At the foundation of the Youth Futures program is the belief that every child has areas of strength and personal areas of interest. The development and reinforcement of the child's abilities will affect not only his skills in this area but also his feeling of confidence and self-worth. In this way, his experience of success and ability to succeed will be strengthened in other areas of his life as well.

The method chosen to fulfill this potential is participation in an enrichment activity within an informal educational framework after school hours as part of a group or as an individual. The Youth Futures program gives the highest priority to the existence in every community of as large a selection of activities as possible from which the children and youth can choose according to their personal preferences. The program will work to assist in creating activities if they do not exist and will assist in strengthening and improving already existing activities.

An annual personal growth budget will be allocated for each child for this purpose. This budget is intended to provide a solution to three primary needs:

• Strengthening various personal skills - intended to provide the child with the possibility of expanding his areas of strength and interest through participation in an appropriate extracurricular activity group or course. The aim is to strengthen the child's abilities and skills as agreed upon by the child and Trustee.
• Group activities - each Trustee group of 8 children will have an annual activity budget, which can be devoted to group social activity (movies, plays, etc.), the purchase of material for group activity (art materials, gardening material, etc.), year-end parties etc. 
• A budget available to the Trustee for each child - intended to enable the Trustee to strengthen the relationship with the child through personal gestures (such as a birthday present, a New Year card, prizes, etc.).

Evaluation of Participants and Continued Supervision

During the summer each child will go through an evaluation process. This process will measure the children's progress and assess each one in order to establish which children are still in need of a guiding Trustee and which children have progressed to the point of a form of independence - and thus do not need an intensive Trustee. The children who are able to continue progressing scholastically and emotionally without their Trustees will be considered "Trustee Alumni" (i.e. graduated from the Trustee stage - see following paragraph), and will continue to the next stage - working with a less rigorous Trustee program, and strengthening their young leadership skills through helping younger children in the program.