As a potential intervention, Project Step-Up is an interdisciplinary, secondary prevention afterschool program targeting socio-emotional and academic domains while also providing needed mental health resources for hard-to-engage youth. This paper presents data on participants’ mental health status and sustained participation in the program’s afterschool youth group, where participation is conceptualized as a component of overall engagement (Staudt, 2007). While evaluating Project Step-Up via a randomized controlled trial (RCT) is beyond the scope of the current paper, preliminary data helps to determine whether Project Step-Up can feasibly engage at-risk youth, which is a necessary first step prior to formal RCT evaluation.