National PAL Mentoring Initiative

The National Mentoring Program was established to support national initiatives that support the enhancement or expansion of initiatives that will assist in the development and maturity of community programs providing 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. This program is authorized by the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011, Pub. L. 112-110.

The National Association of Police Athletic/Activities Leagues, Inc. (National PAL) will assist up to 165 Police Athletic/Activities Leagues (PAL) in communities across the country in implementng programs. For 69 years, National PAL has provided juvenile delinquency prevention activities through mentoring relationships between youth and law enforcement that foster trust and respect, particularly for youth identified as at-risk or underserved. The proposed National PAL Mentoring Initiative will build upon this success in meeting the needs of targeted youth. Short- and intermediate-term goals include increasing the number of mentoring programs, enhancing the capacity of existing programs and increasing the number of youth and mentors identified. To achieve these goals, National PAL will provide funding and technical assistance to selected chapters that include data collection, recruitment and assessment of eligible youth, program implementation, mentor recruitment and selection, mentoring training, and youth and family support activities. Based on previously developed data collection tools and instruments for the existing National PAL Mentoring Program, PAL Chapters will be provided an efficient and accountable data collection tool to support their collection of all required data for the following performance measures: juvenile delinquency rates for the youth participating in the mentoring programs; the number of youth who had an arrest or delinquent offense; school attendance rates; and perception of social support.

CA/NCF