From Hurt and Harm to Hope and Healing

The Heart of The PATHfinder Club

The PATHfinder Club (TPC) recognizes and addresses the unique challenges that youth face when they are impacted by incarceration, detention, or deportation.

PATHfinder Clubs are creative, empowering, and safe spaces focused on creating positive peer and adult relationships, building practical skills, and promoting positive self-image and sense of purpose.

Using a Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) approach, PATHfinder Club leaders foster opportunities for creative exploration and dialogue to help build resilience and provide positive, youth-focused spaces for connection.

Positive Impact

55% of students report a great degree of change after participating in club for 10 weeks

Increasing Student Agency

42% of students experience a greater ability to change things that need to be changed

Emotional Growth

42% of students report a greater ability to express their emotions

The results above demonstrate overall positive developmental changes in students since joining our Club, as found in a 2020 survey delivered by the University of Southern California and California State University Northridge. The longer students participate in Club, the greater the changes reported across all areas of developemental domains.

The PATHfinder Club Model

We offer tools and supports to implement PATHfinder Clubs in a range of community, school, and institutional settings. In a PATHfinder Club, youth meet others who are experiencing similar challenges, suspend judgement and support each other as they begin to learn how to feel and express their feelings safely. Together, through evidenced based Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) focused activities, they develop the self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship, and decision-making skills they need to positively develop and to envision and pursue a bright future for themselves.

Evaluation research demonstrating measurable, positive outcomes
Grounded in leading evidence-based practice for positive youth development
Adaptable to the specific needs of your community and setting

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National Institute of Health Supporting Student Health and Resilience Study

The impact and effectiveness of PATHfinder Clubs and POPS Clubs are currently being evaluated by a four-year quasi-experimental longitudinal study, the Supporting Student Health and Resilience Study (SHARE), funded by the National Institute of Health (Grant number 5 SC1 GM144183), conducted by a team at California State University Northridge led by Dr. Myriam Forster.

SHARE assesses whether participating in PATHfinder Clubs fosters Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) competencies, prevents or curtails substance use and related health compromising behaviors, disciplinary events, criminal justice involvement, depression and anxiety; and promotes resilience, psychosocial adaptation, and positive outcomes. Data generated by the SHARE project will fill important gaps in the developmental literature regarding risk profiles and resilience processes among historically underserved and understudied youth populations. The study findings will advance evidence-based prevention-intervention program development and determine whether PATHfinder Clubs benefit systems-impacted youth.

Preliminary evidence from the study suggests that although developmental competency scores and involvement in other risky behaviors are similar across youth with a history of familial incarceration (and other ACEs) who participate in PATHfinder Clubs and youth with this history (and correlated ACEs) who don’t participate in PATHfinder Clubs at baseline, in just six months youth who participate in PATHfinder Clubs make substantial gains in social-emotional and developmental competencies (similar to their general population peers) and these gains offset the negative consequences of household incarceration.

Feedback Report for the SHARE Project | Fall 2024

Club member standing in front of chalkboard with prompt 'what has TPC done for you?'

Club Member Testimonial

The PATHfinder Club has shaped me into a stronger person by giving me the space and room to collect my thoughts and let go of what happened, what could’ve happened, or what should’ve happened. This program has helped me realize that I am not alone in what I went through. This program has shined on my writing skills and helped me realize my potential.

Shaniece Freeman

In the Media

Students with parents in prison give advice to their younger selves

(The Jefferson Exchange – Jefferson Public Radio)

“Not every kid in school has a happy home life to go back to every night. In fact, some children are waiting for a parent or two to get out of prison or jail. The PATHfinder program–PATH is Paving a Trail of Hope–and POPS the Club, for Pains of the Prison System, work to help teen children of incarcerated parents. They not only get to meet and share stories, they get to express themselves through writing and art.”

Teens Impacted by Prison Share Their Hurts, Fears, Dreams, and Hopes Through Personal Reflections and Creative Expression

(Culver City Observer)

“There is, however, a club at Culver City High School where every week these teens have an opportunity to be seen, heard, and understood. They are members of a club known as POPS the Club.

Founded as a nonprofit in Los Angeles over a decade ago, last year The Pathfinder Network based in Portland, Oregon took over club operations to continue to provide and expand support for youth across the country whose lives have been impacted in any way by incarceration, detention and deportation.”

More Media Features

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