AZ RISE Collaboration

The Mentoring Opportunities for Youth Initiative, Category 3 (Collaborative Mentoring Program) provides funding to support organizations that form a collaborative of at least three and as many as five mentoring organizations in their efforts to strengthen and/or expand their existing mentoring programs to reduce juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, truancy, and other problem and high-risk behaviors. FY 2015 funding will address the factors that can lead to or serve as a catalyst for delinquency or other problem behaviors for at-risk and high-risk youth. This program is authorized by the FY15(OJJDP Ment. Oppor Yth) Pub. L. No. 113-235; 128 Stat. 2130, 2195.

Pima Prevention Partnership (PPP) will implement a combination of evidence-based mentoring services to 240 at-risk youth ages 12-17 in school, site and community-based settings across Tucson/Pima County, Arizona. Many of Tucson's youth face a myriad of socio-economic barriers such as high rates of homelessness, low graduation rates, remedial skills deficiency, undetected/untreated trauma exposure and related substance use, and disproportionate minority justice involvement. Mentoring has proven to be one of the most effective tools in breaking the cycle. PPP will provide one-on-one and group mentoring formats at distinct sites serving high populations of the region's most vulnerable youth, including public middle schools in metro Tucson, Boys & Girls Clubs and other community sites serving youth in high crime, low-income communities. All youth will be recruited through community partners serving the same population. PPP will draw from findings of its soon-to-be-completed AZ STARS Mentoring Enhancement Demonstration Project to lead the new AZ RISE Mentoring Collaborative with partners Goodwill Industries of Southern Arizona. The program will utilize nationally recognized GoodGuides mentoring program - and One-On-One Mentoring/Mentoring Tucson's Kids, which provides both community and faith-based mentoring services. PPP in collaboration with its partners will: 1) strengthen match quality; 2) improve strength of relationships through increased mentor knowledge and skill; 3) lengthen match duration well beyond the 12-month minimum; and 4) affect transformational change in youth's perceived connections to their families, peers and community and improved targeted behaviors. PPP will have real time performance data for use by partners in finalizing service delivery for maximum impact, and will provide a replicable model for other mentoring programs serving at-risk adolescents.
CA/NCF