These programs help youth achieve and maintain healthy and active lifestyles.

Peer Pressure Prevention


Our Clubs offer the SMART Moves prevention and education program. SMART Moves promotes abstinence from substance abuse and premature sexual involvement through the practice of responsible behavior. Based on proven techniques, this program uses a team approach of Club professionals, peer leaders, parents and community representatives. The program engages young people in discussion and role-playing, where they practice resistance and refusal skills, develop assertiveness, strengthen decision-making skills and analyze media and peer influence.

SMART Girls and Passport to Manhood are gender-specific groups that create an open forum for young people to discuss issues important to them. Topics can include health, fitness, violence, etiquette, hygiene, body image and other issues that factor into adolescent boys’ and girls’ lives. These groups address the issues that affect members’ abilities to develop their full potential.

Gang Prevention – Young people learn how to effectively resist gangs and violence, resolve conflicts and be positive peer helpers in their communities. In addition, young people become involved in annual events that celebrate anti-gang and anti-violence themes.

Health and Nutrition – Developed in response to a recent U.S. Surgeon General’s report on oral health that reveals a silent epidemic of oral disease among children. Through oral health educational programs and creative writing and arts opportunities, our Clubs are working to improve the oral health of Club members. In fact, the Robert R. McCormick Club hosts a dental clinic for Club members that is staffed by residents from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry.