Cause Index

Positive Youth Development Foundation

The Positive Youth Development Foundation (PYDF) aims to empower underprivileged and disadvantaged South African youth to become agents of positive change. Our aim is to ensure that evidence-based psychological interventions are made available and accessible in each and every impoverished community within South Africa. Positive youth development (PYD) is an asset-building approach to research and practice that emphasizes enhancing strengths and promoting optimal health and well-being. PYD interventions focus on developing internal assets, personal competencies, and life skills (both physical and social) that can be transferred to other areas of life. PYD is an emerging field that broadly pertains to the engagement in constructive behaviours and the development of prosocial skills. Appropriate PYD programs that are safe, supportive, and accessible – enable the provision of crucial knowledge and psychological skills, as well as mitigate negative effects of poverty and disability. We focus on developing new evidence-based programs and the training of facilitators and organisations in the implementation of already existing evidence-based PYD programs, whilst continually refining these to be more culturally appropriate and context specific.

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