The Youth Empowerment Mentoring Initiative

The Mentoring Opportunities for Youth Initiative, Category 3 (Mentoring Programs for Youth Involved in the Juvenile Justice System) provides funding to support youth mentoring organizations that have a demonstrated partnership with a juvenile justice agency. The focus is to provide mentoring services to those youth screened as being low risk to public safety by a juvenile justice agency as part of an overall diversion approach with a goal of rehabilitation and accountability. This program is authorized and funded pursuant to Pub. L. No. 115-141, 132 Stat. 348, 423.

Youthworks seeks to expand and strengthen its existing mentoring program titled the Youth Empowerment Mentoring Initiative. Youthworks has provided diversion services for the local juvenile courts since 1994 in Bismarck and since 2000 in Fargo. With OJJDP funding, Youthworks will expand one-to-one and group mentoring services to at-risk youth referred to the agency by the juvenile court by more than 900 percent and proposes to serve 275 youth during the 3 years of the project. Referred youth will typically be on non-reporting probation and may already have been diverted to the agency due to a juvenile citation. Given the known value of being mentored and providing mentoring, emphasis will be placed on empowering referred youth to eventually become mentors themselves and to serve on the agency’s Youth Advisory Board. In addition to the performance measures required by OJJDP through this announcement, Youthworks will track progress of each youth’s attainment of developmental assets and the anticipated corresponding decrease in negative behaviors (decrease in status and delinquent offenses), with the overall goal of preventing referred youth from being placed on supervised probation and in either foster care or correctional care. None of the requested funds will be used to conduct research. Youthworks will not make subawards with any requested funds. CA/NCF