Rogers County Local Mentoring Coordinator Program

OJJDP supports wide-ranging mentoring initiatives to reduce juvenile delinquency, gang involvement, academic failure, victimization, and school dropout rates. While mentoring is traditionally a volunteer-based service, a need exists for staff and resources to support the efforts of each mentoring program. Developing and maintaining mentoring partnerships and collaboratives can build capacity and increase the power of mentoring to benefit more young people. Local mentoring partnerships and collaboratives can bring together public and private sector leadership, eliminate duplication of efforts, fill service gaps, and offer centralized services. The successful award recipient(s) will fund a coordinator position to support a local continuum of mentoring services for targeted youth.

Continuation funding for the Rogers County Local Mentoring Coordinator Program will allow Rogers County Volunteers for Youth to further develop the collaboration established in year one of the project. In year one the collaboration strengthened, enhanced, and enlarged each of the four partnering programs resulting in more youth served, better-equipped and supported mentors, and the implementation of cohesive best practices in mentoring. Through the collaboration, led by the funded mentoring coordinator, at-risk youth are reached in Catoosa High School's freshman class, the City of Claremore's BLAST After School Program for 6th-8th graders, Claremore High School freshman class, and the one-to-one mentoring program called the PAL Program of Rogers County Volunteers for Youth.
Key activities implemented in year one of the project include best practices in recruitment, screening and training of mentors, orientation of mentees, application of evidence-based curriculum, development and distribution of new mentor resources, and thorough evaluations within the individual programs. Progress toward the stated goals was measured during evaluation phases utilizing survey instruments and in-person interviews. Year two activities will strengthen the partnerships and further develop the methods to deliver quality mentoring to the target population of at-risk youth. Evaluation methods to measure progress toward the year two goals will not significantly change. Rogers County Volunteers for Youth will not use any portion of the project budget to conduct research. CA/NCF