Reach and Rise Juvenile Mentoring Program

The National Mentoring Program provides funding to support national mentoring organizations in their efforts to strengthen and/or expand their existing mentoring activities within local chapters or sub-awardees to reduce juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, truancy, and other problem and high-risk behaviors. FY 2014 funding will address the factors that can lead to or serve as a catalyst for delinquency or other problem behaviors in underserved youth, including youth in high-risk environments, children of incarcerated parents and tribal youth. The program is comprised of three categories: Category 1 for organizations implementing one-on-one mentoring programs, Category 2 for Group mentoring programs and Category 3 for a combination of both one-on-one and group mentoring.

The National Council of Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA-USA) expects to continue leveraging their unique membership base of individuals, staff, and volunteers to deliver their successful, evidence-based Reach and Rise Mentoring Program in 38 states. The Reach and Rise Mentoring Program (formerly named Building Futures Mentoring) intervenes in breaking multi-generational cycles of poverty, delinquency, and the 'school-to-prison' pipeline via therapeutic approaches which are equally rooted in evidence-based mentoring practices in mental health modalities. The project targets young people ages 6-17, males and females, who live and go to school in low-income communities that experience disproportionate rates of poverty, juvenile crime, and untreated trauma. They collaborate with local schools, military, and veterans organizations to recruit youth. The program's overall goals are to: 1) fortify youth against the challenges inherent in our culture and especially prevalent in economically challenged communities of poverty; and 2) increase community connectedness among mentees, including their connections to their local schools and employment communities. The expected ethnic breakdown of youth in the program is 59% African American, 29% Latino, 5% Asian/Pacific Islander, 3% Caucasian, and 4% Multi-Cultural. They expect that 5% of youth will be recruited from military families and 10% will have an incarcerated parent. Over the three-year grant, they will match 3,680 youth with mentors. CA/NCF