Beyond Mentoring program focus on providing mentoring services for at-risk middle school youth within four targeted counties.

The 'Beyond Mentoring' program will match youth with mentors from the faith-based organizations, law enforcement agencies, business, local schools, civic and community-based organization for traditional and on-line mentoring. The goal is to provide tools for at-risk youths in low-income communities within Scott, Leake, Lauderdale, Rankin and Hinds Counties. This will enable the youth to make positive choices to achieve academic success, break the cycle of teen pregnancy and poverty, reduce juvenile delinquency and the onset of substance abuse. The purpose is to use mentoring not only for intervention, but as a protective factor for those youth most at-risk in becoming involved in negative behaviors or activities. The project will develop and implement an effective mentoring program to respond to the needs of at least 500 highly at-risk poverty stricken youths using materials from the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. Youth will improve academic performance by measuring grade-point average, statewide testing and students progress reports. The evaluation methods will include objective performance measures for benchmarking purposes, documenting baseline data and providing data to track results longitudinally such as tracking the number of students participating in the program, behavior referrals and delinquency, and academic achievement and retention. A comparison study will be conducted on those students participating in the program and nonparticipants within the targeted counties to assess the extent to which the program will achieve it goals for at risk youth. CA/NCF