Reach and Rise Mentoring Program

The Mentoring Opportunities for Youth Initiative, Category 1 (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 (in at least 45 states) 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 in underserved youth, including youth in high-risk environments. Programs are required to target American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) youth, and are also highly encouraged to target their mentoring services to children of parents on active military duty; children of incarcerated parents; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth; youth with disabilities; and youth in rural communities. This program is authorized by the FY15(OJJDP Ment. Oppor Yth) Pub. L. No. 113-235; 128 Stat. 2130, 2195.

The National Council of Young Men's Christian Associations of the USA expects to continue leveraging their unique membership base of individuals, staff, and volunteers to deliver our successful, evidence-based Reach & Rise® group mentoring program in 38 unique states. The Reach & Rise Mentoring Program intervenes in breaking multi-generational cycles of poverty, delinquency, and the “school-to-prison” pipeline via therapeutic approaches which are equally rooted in evidenced-based mentoring practices and mental health modalities. The group mentoring targets young people ages 8–15, males and females, who live and go to school in low-income communities that experience disproportionate rates of poverty, juvenile crime, and untreated trauma. We collaborate with local schools and partner agencies to specifically recruit American Indian youth and youth from military families. The goals of the program are to: 1) Fortify youth against the challenges inherent in our culture and especially prevalent in economically challenged communities of poverty; and 2) Improve youth’s sense of achievement, belonging and ability to form peer, non-parent and familial relationship in their lives. Over the three-year grant, 9,576 participants will participate in group mentoring.
CA/NCF