2016 National PAL Mentoring Initiative

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 2016 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.

The Association of National Police Athletic/Activities Leagues (PAL) seeks to expand and enhance its National PAL Mentoring Program to serve at-risk and high-risk youth throughout the country. The goal of National PAL Mentoring Program is to develop positive relationships between at-risk and high-risk youth ages 6–17 and law enforcement professionals while helping youth develop protective factors to buffer the impact of violent and high crime neighborhoods, poverty and negative peer influence on these youth. Youth will participate in group mentoring at local PAL chapters across the country. National PAL mentoring connects youth with mentors (4:1 mentee-to-mentor ratio) to engage in weekly mentoring sessions, following the nationally recognized community safety curricula developed by the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC). National PAL will work with 100 local Chapters - in Washington D.C. and 39 states. Over the 15-month implementation period, local PAL Chapters will target youth who experience co-occurring risk factors ranging from individual factors such as positive attitudes towards drug and alcohol or antisocial personalities to community-level factors such as unsafe neighborhoods and poverty. The program will also target underserved populations such as American Indian/Alaska Native youth, children from military families, children of incarcerated parents, LBGTQ youth, youth with disabilities and youth living in rural communities. To serve American Indian/Alaska Native youth, National PAL will ensure that Tribal police department PAL’s are provided the opportunity to run the program and will provide targeted training and technical support to sites with a high native youth population. In order to achieve the project goal, National PAL will: 1) provide 100 local PAL Chapters with subawards to implement the program; 2) improve the quality of implementation through trainings and technical assistance; 3) introduce new curricula from NCPC to be used in the program; and 4) thoroughly track performance measures and outcomes through an online grant management system and pre- and post- mentor/mentee surveys. Pre-and post-surveys for mentees and mentors will assess project progress. National PAL will collect performance measures data quarterly through an existing online reporting system on social support improvement, engagement in juvenile delinquency, and attitude towards delinquent behavior and activities. Data collection will not constitute research for generalizable knowledge. CA/NCF