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Show Notes

• 02:20 Aurelio introduces the show topic – "Learnings from the Coca-Cola Valued Youth Program" – and welcomes guests Linda Cantú, Ph.D. and Juanita García, Ph.D.

• 03:12 Linda provides an overview of IDRA's Coca-Cola Valued Youth?Program. Linda explains the meaning of "valued youth." Linda explains how the program has been successful over the last 23 years, and notes that 98 percent of students who serve as tutors each year are promoted.

• 06:17 Juanita talks about the success of Coca-Coca Valued Youth Program, based on her day-to-day dealings with the participant schools. Juanita describes a successful case study from a South Texas school, where students talked about the benefits they found as tutors in the program during an end-of-year banquet.

• 08:56 Linda summarizes the quantitative data that is collected from students each year when evaluating the success of the program. Linda talks about the main questions that teachers and administrators pose to IDRA about the potential tutors when discussing whether to implement the Coca-Cola Valued Youth Program: (1) Are the students capable? And (2) Will they be responsible enough to act as role models in the elementary schools? Linda says that teachers start to see the positive results with the student tutors in the first six weeks.

• 11:58 Juanita reads some of the end-of-year reflections from the tutors. Juanita talks about the importance of the positive feedback that the elementary school teacher coordinators give to the tutors.

• 14:35 Linda talks about a particular school where the secondary school teachers strongly questioned why at-risk students were being selected as tutors. She notes that after the success of the program in the first year, those teachers had come around and were recommending that more students participate.

• 16:30 Aurelio asks how participating schools avoid the stigma of being labeled as "at risk."

• 17:40 Linda reiterates that any stigma attached to the program usually goes away by the second year, once students, administrators, teachers and parents have seen its success.

• 19:25 Juanita talks about the thoughtful ways in which the tutors use the stipends they receive for participating in the program.