Supporting Children in Crisis: Preventing Early Behaviors That Can Lead to Delinquency and Dropout Among Underserved Youth in High-Risk Communities

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.'

Big Brothers Big Sisters of America will provide mentoring services to vulnerable, underserved youth nationwide in order to prevent attitudes and early behaviors that can often lead children into the juvenile justice system. This grant will enable Big Brothers Big Sisters to: (a) expand services in a more targeted, intentional manner to reach the right children with the right mentor and the right program; (b) build systems, processes and technology for continuous improvement in program models and practices so that BBBSA can drive longer, stronger matches leading to positive youth outcomes; and (c) leverage the data from the Agency Information Management (AIM) system ' the world's largest database of mentoring matches ' by analyzing and sharing data with our local and national partners and convening discussions about community solutions based on our shared learnings.

Using SMART data and other indicators, the targeted communities will demonstrate high concentrations of populations with known risk factors including ethnicity, poverty, parental incarceration and single-family households.
CA/NCF