HOPE Business In A Box Academies/Business Role Models and Mentors

The Multi-State Mentoring Program provides funding to support established mentoring organizations in their efforts to strengthen and/or expand their existing mentoring activities within local chapters or sub-awardees in five or more states 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 grantee will implement HOPE Business In a Box Academies (HBIABA), which are designed to target at-risk and underserved youth between the ages of 12 and 17 who are least likely to have trusting relationships with adults due to a variety of risk factors. HBIABA are small learning communities organized around a financial and entrepreneurial theme. The program is designed to provide information, technical and academic skills, enhance engagement and performance in school, and, overall, enable participants to make a successful transition to postsecondary education and, later, a career, or start their own businesses. The program operates on a school level, with a specific structure and curriculum, and on a community level, through business role models and job opportunities with local employers. The overarching goal of HBIABA is to create opportunities for youth, spur a generation of entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs and ultimately lessen income inequality, grow new wealth creation and spur a new era of jobs. This will be accomplished through the use of Business Role Models to help at-risk youth in underserved communities build a foundation of financial knowledge, develop career plans and skills, prepare for productive work, and explore entrepreneurial opportunities by providing structured and supportive relationships with trusted, caring, community role models. Objectives include: 1) to serve at-risk youth and underserved communities with ongoing and consistent mentoring with a HOPE Business Role Model; 2) to recruit Business Role Models locally and grow HOPE Corps nationally; 3) to enhance Business Role Model training and increase retention; 4) to transfer financial knowledge and develop career readiness skills through structured activities; 5) to ignite entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial spirit among at-risk youth, thereby creating economically strong communities; and 6) to reconnect at-risk youth to school and work.

Performance measures include but are not limited to: number of new HBIAB Academies; number of at-risk and underserved youth served in 6 targeted urban cities; and number of new business mentors/role models recruited and trained to work with at-risk youth. CA/NCF