Education Magazine Showcases Clubhouse Learning Approach
The most recent edition of “Childhood Education: Innovations” features an article co-authored by Clubhouse Network Executive Director Gail Breslow and Evaluation and Impact Program Manager René Milet Hernández.
We are grateful to Mauricio Ramírez Martínez, Bennett Pomana, and Megan Nykodym, staff at the three Clubhouses featured in this story, for sharing in-depth stories about their communities without which this article would not be possible. Their exemplary commitment to their young people and passion for this work is inspirational.
Entitled “Creative Learning and Mental Health: Working With Youth in The Clubhouse Network,” the article explores how three Clubhouses around the globe offer unique opportunities to address adolescent vulnerabilities and provide trauma-informed care, and what others can learn from their experience.
The Clubhouse @ Uramba Maker Lab in Buenaventura, Colombia is a safe space for teens facing violence in the streets and intimidation at school. The Taitā Clubhouse in Lower Hutt, New Zealand offers culturally responsive programming to youth, including those of indigenous descent. The Best Buy Teen Tech Center @ Las Vegas Clark County Library in Las Vegas, USA serves many youth in unstable and transitory housing situations. Through stories and studies of these three Clubhouses, the article aims to show how our informal, unstructured learning communities can be places of healing and support.
For nearly 30 years The Clubhouse Network has provided young people from low-income communities with a safe out-of-school setting in which to explore, experiment, and express themselves through technology. In the process, they gain a stronger sense of self while developing marketable technology and life skills. Furthermore, The Clubhouse Learning Model helps young people deal with some of the real pain in their lives.
Childhood Education: Innovations is an education magazine that provides unique, stimulating information about educational programs around the world. Articles explore solutions to specific challenges affecting schools, teachers, and learners and showcase the most recent innovations being developed and implemented to address those challenges. Readers will find inspiration for transforming education to better serve children and society. Published 6 times a year, CE Innovations provides a window into the work being done to bring quality, equitable education to all children.
About the Authors
René Milet Hernández, Evaluation and Impact Program Manager, joined The Clubhouse Network in August 2020 to develop and support evaluation processes, and to serve as geographic liaison to the Clubhouses in Latin America. He comes to the Network with experience in program evaluation and research, as well as community health education, street outreach, and immigration law, much of it in Boston. He is a native of Santiago, Chile.
Gail Breslow, Executive Director, has overseen the dissemination of The Clubhouse program to community-based organizations around the world since 1995. In addition, she has spearheaded the development of programs such as Hear Our Voices (a Clubhouse program for girls and young women); Clubhouse-to-College/ Clubhouse-to-Career; and Beyond Four Walls: The Computer Clubhouse as Invention Studio. Gail served for many years on the Technology and Youth Advisory Committee of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and has led workshops about The Clubhouse’s unique learning approach at youth, community and technology conferences around the world. Gail’s professional career had its “roots” in the non-profit sector; in the late 1970’s she served as Program Director at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.
