Education
BBC Education Online: Count Me In
www.bbc.co.uk/education/revisewise
is a part of BBC Online’s enormous education site dedicated to children. Created as an aid for parents and teachers, this fun and colorful site helps elementary school kids grasp science, “maths” and English. The site is designed as a study aid for children preparing for the U.K.’s standardized test KS2, but its interactive activities, fact sheets and tests are fun and helpful for any young person grappling with an academic subject or wanting a refresher.
Faith-Based
Beliefnet
www.beliefnet.org
offers an array of spiritual services to its visitors. It has links and information about religious groups large and small, including Baha’i, Scientology and Taoism. The Family and Life Events feature covers topics such as youth drug use, single parenting, adoption and education. The site (whose chairman and editor, Steve Waldman, has written extensively on national service issues) also features information about religiously affiliated charities, and children’s book and video reviews. Beliefnet is a nondenominational company based in New York City and funded by several corporations.
Management
4-H Access the Future Coalition
www.4-H.org/access
is an effort on the part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 4-H program to help close the digital divide by providing prospective community organizers with useful local and national information. Links to research and help sites on fund-raising, publicity, coalition-building and successful programs already operating are provided through one easily navigated site.
Sexual Behavior
Broder 13 Dot Com
www.broder13.com
tells the story of a gay teenager, Braden Jahr, growing up in a rural town. While Jahr’s experiences are personal and specific, his story and his decision to publicize his struggles within his community are sure to strike a chord with more fearful gay teen-agers. Jahr also has posted several running interviews that offer different perspectives on homosexuality – one interview subject is the mother of a gay son, another is the daughter in a lesbian home – and also give readers the chance to pose questions.
Well-Being
Ameristat
www.ameritat.org
correctly advertises itself as the one-stop source for population data. Published by the nonprofit Population Reference Bureau and demographers from the University of Michigan’s Social Science Data Analysis Network, the site offers ready-made reports on categories within 13 broad subjects, including marriage and family, population projections, race and ethnicity, education, income, and poverty and children.
Strengthening and Promoting the Formation of Healthy Families
www.mathematica-mpr.com/3rdlevel/strengtheninglow-incfam.htm
focuses on the family aspects of effective welfare reform. The site, hosted by Mathematica Policy Research, links readers to in-house research on abstinence, fatherhood, child support enforcement, teenage parenting and other youth service and welfare-related issues.
Clearinghouse on International Developments in Child, Youth and Family Policies
www.childpolicyintl.org
is a valuable bank of information for anyone in need of cross-national data. Run by Child Policy International, part of Columbia University’s Institute for Child and Family Policy, the site features profiles for 23 developed nations, issue briefs, social indicators, and youth-related international law documents and publications. The site is both simple in layout and heavy on raw data and statistics.
