National Youth Mentoring Training and Technical Assistance Center

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) supports wide-ranging mentoring initiatives aimed at reducing juvenile delinquency, gang involvement, academic failure, victimization, and school dropout rates. In 1992, Part G of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act was enacted to fund mentoring efforts that reduce factors placing youth at risk for delinquency. Under this solicitation, OJJDP intends to expand its national leadership role in the youth mentoring arena by advancing the capacity of State and local jurisdictions and Indian tribal governments to develop, implement, expand, evaluate, and sustain youth mentoring efforts that incorporate research-based findings of best practices and principles.
In addition, OJJDP anticipates that training and technical assistance under this Initiative will provide support to mentoring programs and initiatives funded by OJJDP, including the Recovery Act National Mentoring Program and the Recovery Act Local Youth Mentoring Initiative. The legislative authority for this initiative can be found in the Department of Justice Appropriations Act, 2009, Pub. L. 111-8.

Education Development Center, Inc. and Dare Mighty Things propose to operate the National Youth Mentoring Training and TA (TTA) Center. The project's purpose/goal is to build the competency, performance, and capacity of OJJDP mentoring grantees and other mentoring programs through training and technical assistance (TTA). The primary population to be served is OJJDP mentoring grantees, although TTA will be available to non-grantees. The objective is to enhance the capacity of mentoring programs to' integrate evidence-based practices, develop/expand community collaborations, create mentor recruitment/retention strategies for hard-to-reach populations, ensure sustainability, foster alliances, and reduce the juvenile delinquency, gang participation, and school dropout rates of program participants. Activities include providing one-to-one TTA to grantees, providing cross-site TTA to grantees and non-grantees, advancing the capacity of the field by fostering mentoring alliances and convening national consortia of mentoring researchers and practitioners, and evaluating the project's efforts and applying the findings to refine services.
CA/NCF