Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2009, $3,496,766)
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's (OJJDP) National Mentoring Programs initiative is authorized by the statutes appropriating funds for fiscal year 2009. OJJDP made awards to applicants that proposed the enhancement or expansion of initiatives that will assist in the development and maturity of community programs to provide mentoring services to high-risk populations that are underserved due to location, shortage of mentors, special physical or mental challenges of the targeted population, or other analogous situations identified by the community in need of mentoring services.'
The Ready to Achieve Mentoring Program (RAMP) will utilize the 'Guideposts for Success' transition framework and 'Paving the Way to Work: A Guide to Career-Focused Mentoring for Youth with Disabilities' as a foundation to provide high-tech career-focused mentoring to youth with disabilities at-risk for truancy or court-involvement. The Institute for Educational Leadership's Center for Workforce Development, seeks to work with state and local disability and mentoring organizations to provide one-on-one, group, and peer mentoring using research-based strategies. Youth will participate in weekly career preparation focused group meetings including peer supported goal setting, as well as regular one-on-one mentor meetings for individualized mentoring plan development and implementation.
Performance measures for this project include: (1) increase the percentage of youth with disabilities who remain in school; (2) decrease the percentage of youth with disabilities who experience arrest, incarceration, or who reoffend; and (3) document positive behavior changes (increased social competence, school attendance, and/or perception of social support) for 75 percent of the youth. CF/NCF