Big Brothers Big Sisters of Colorado's mentoring partnership to serve at-risk students in Aurora, Colorado.

This grant program is authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5) (the 'Recovery Act'). Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention made awards to support local organizations that develop, implement, or expand local mentoring programs leading to measurable, positive outcomes for at-risk youth. This program furthers the Department's mission by enhancing the capacity of local mentoring programs to develop and implement mentoring strategies to reduce juvenile delinquency and prevent violence.

The purpose of this project is to strengthen and expand Big Brothers Big Sisters of Colorado (BBBSC)'s one-to-one mentoring program for at-risk youth in Aurora, Colorado. To do this, BBBSC will partner with the Aurora Public School District (APS), the City of Aurora's Office of Youth Development (OYD), the Aurora Police Department (APD) and local businesses Aurora. Major Activities are to 1) recruit, screen and train new adult volunteers to be mentors; 2) carefully match volunteer mentors with at-risk youth and provide ongoing monitoring and supervision of each match relationship; 3) serve youth in one of two mentoring program settings depending on the needs and preferences of youth, their families and volunteer mentors; 4) provide enrichment activities for mentoring matches; and 5) collect data and evaluate the impact of the expanded mentoring program. Expected outcomes are that the BBBSC expanded mentoring program will help youth to improve their school performance, avoid delinquent behavior, and stay in school and on the path to graduation.

This award will retain approximately 8 jobs and will fund 1 new job; thus the project achieves the Recovery Act objective of promoting economic recovery by preserving or creating jobs. CA/NCF