Abstract
The Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (GJWHF) program is a female-only physical activity-based life skills program that aims to empower female youth and facilitate positive psychosocial outcomes. The purpose of this research was to conduct a process evaluation of the second year of program implementation to gain an understanding of improvements over the first year of the program and continuing challenges faced by the program leaders while implementing the program. From interviews with youth and leaders, as well as documentation from the leaders’ weekly online log of each implemented session, a number of themes emerged. First, related to the program’s successes, year two of GJWHF addressed a number of recommendations from year one including providing a larger space for the program, more reliable transportation, smaller group sizes, more community involvement for youth, and more on-going training for leaders. Themes related to ongoing challenges included competing club activities, low participation rates, and the development of social cliques. Recommendations for future programing included having longer program sessions and integrating older participants as junior leaders of the program. Overall, this process evaluation represents an important step in understanding how to improve program delivery to better meet the needs of the participants in community-based programming. In addition, this evaluation has helped improve the program and facilitated the transition to incorporating the GJWHF as a sustainable program that is being integrated into regular ongoing programming at the Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa.Acknowledgments: Research Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)