K–5.

The program grew out of a small summer camp for girls in Charleston (1996), and since 2000 has evolved into a daily after-school format for all children, based in specific schools.

The program's approach rests on three pillars: the culture of the program, the social and emotional skills of the adults themselves, and a comprehensive curriculum — a system of lessons and activities that explicitly and implicitly convey the necessary competencies to children throughout the day, rather than in a single lesson. The idea is that social-emotional learning shouldn't be a separate activity, but should become a shared language and everyday practice for adults, built into every minute of the after-school program.

The program is organized around a single shared vocabulary of concepts — "Words to Live By" — used across the whole program, from the youngest children to leadership. The curriculum consists of ten specific learning goals — two for each of the five key competencies — and each goal comes with its own lessons, activities, and games. Learning isn't limited to one-off lessons: the same skills are reinforced through many short teaching moments throughout the day, so children can put them into practice right away.

The ultimate goal is to teach children to recognize their emotions, make thoughtful decisions, build healthy relationships, and cope with stress.

The program runs daily, 5 days a week, from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m., throughout the school year. Children are placed in small groups, each assigned to the same mentor for the entire school year — so the group becomes a stable, consistent environment for the child rather than a series of one-off sessions.

More than 10,593 children have taken part in the program since it was founded in 1996 (according to the organization's website, data from 2019–2020 — no more recent figures could be found on the site).

Current figures should be confirmed with the organization's official representatives.

South Carolina and Georgia (USA) — where the program works directly with children. Training materials and educator training are distributed more broadly, but the exact number of areas reached is not specified.

The program's primary language is English. The official website does not directly indicate any localized languages.

The program is among the 33 SEL programs selected for the research guide "Navigating Social and Emotional Learning from the Inside Out." The guide was produced by the EASEL Lab (Ecological Approaches to Social Emotional Learning Laboratory), a research team at the Harvard Graduate School of Education that studies how different social-emotional learning programs are designed and how they work. The guide was commissioned and funded by the Wallace Foundation, a major American philanthropic foundation that funds research and projects in education, the arts, and youth development.

According to a study, teachers recorded statistically significant effects across 15 areas at once, including self-awareness, reduced incidents of bullying, reading word recognition, self-regulation, and reduced conflicts with teachers. The effect was stronger for children who attended the program for two years than for one.