Mentoring Matters Collaboration

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.

Mentoring Matters Collaboration (MMC) is a joint School-to-Community Based mentoring effort between Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Texas (BBBS) and Communities in Schools of Central Texas (CIS) that pairs students in need with caring adult role models in order to build long-term, one-to-one relationships. BBBS brings a proven system for creating and supporting mentoring relationships, and CIS brings expertise in supporting youth in school settings. The two agencies have come together to create a program that enables more young people in Hays and Travis County to finish school, improve academic performance and avoid delinquent behavior. The program, as currently funded, focuses on middle schools. This award will provide funding to build the capacity/infrastructure needed to improve MMC's quality measures (i.e. match length) and to serve 100 additional at-risk youth by increasing the number of mentoring relationships in current partner schools, adding more middle schools, incorporating feeder-pattern elementary schools, and expanding into a new county. Progress toward these goals will be collected, measured and tracked using performance measurement tools and a database instituted by BBBS of America. CIS will supplement this system by collecting academic information otherwise not accessible and tracking it within their database maintained by Texas Education Agency.

This grant award will create five jobs, thus the project achieves the Recovery Act objective of promoting economic recovery by preserving or creating jobs.

CA/NCF