Bronx Helpers organizes community service projects, such as cleaning up the neighborhood and distributing fliers for the domestic violence campaign. A program called Books and Baskets requires young men to participate in an academic aspect of the teen program for at least one hour a week in order to use indoor hoop courts. In the summer, NSA arranges for a street to be blocked off for a camp program, offering games, arts and crafts. The afterschool and teen programs' major substance abuse prevention strategy is that they provide safe, stimulating, supervised activities. In addition, youth must be drug free to participate in the activities.
Parents trust the programs and check to make sure their offspring are attending.
While youth at New Settlement are at risk, those in the afterschool program demonstrate important signs of resiliency. All have at least one influential adult who has encouraged them to excel in school and to avoid negative influences. Most believe that they have positive opportunities ahead of them and feel encouraged to stay in school. Using writing, drama, drawing and imagination exercises, Kotler encouraged the youth, in individual and group writings, to develop X-ray vision with their poetry, to create and hone images that allow the reader to see clearly into the writer's mind. The realities of the participants' lives jump out of their poetry.