The Center for Character and Citizenship takes a strength-building approach to school-based programming. Defining health broadly to include the physical, social and emotional aspects of human development – conducting research and implementing strategies that promote the “well-being” of school staff, students, families, and communities. This work is situated at the intersection of cognitive psychology, community psychology, and organizational psychology.
The Center’s work is premised on the belief that K-12 education should be holistic – and that caring and ethical relationships are at the heart of much of what we consider “good” education. Our model development here focuses on building protective factors in the lives of youth –protective factors such as autonomy, belonging, and competence – the ABC’s of healthy development. The work is grounded in research from a variety of disciplines which has demonstrated the critical nature of belonging, connection, and relationship to successful development—especially in the lives of kids from poor and disorganized communities. An interdisciplinary review of the scientific research (Berkowitz & Bier, 2005, 2007) demonstrated that character education can produce positive student outcomes and informed the development of the Center’s media and civic literacy and advocacy program– Youth Empowerment in Action.
Youth Empowerment in Action! focuses on researching and building academic knowledge, media literacy and production skills, and civic 
engagement experience as protective factors in the lives of youth. Students in the YEA! Programs gain experience with critical analysis of media messages and produce media aimed at countering the negative influence of unhealthy commercial media. Our research-based multi-component approach intends to build self and collective efficacy for health outcomes in administrators, teachers and students. We are currently using this approach in three areas of positive development 1) YEA! GO GIRLS (positive body image), YEA! Healthy and Active (prevention of childhood obesity), and YEA! TEAM (Tobacco education, advocacy, and media).
A program documentary and samples of student work can be found on youtube/youthempowerment, schooltube.com/user/yea, www.yeabodyimage.com, www.showmesmokefree.com, and www.healthymissouri.net.
