The Red Expansion Project

The Mentoring Opportunities for Youth Initiative, Category 4 (Project Sites and Mentoring Strategies for Youth Impacted by Opioids) supports youth mentoring organizations that have a demonstrated partnership with a public or private substance abuse treatment agency. The focus of this category is to provide mentoring services as a part of a prevention, treatment and supportive approach for those youth impacted by opioids. This program is authorized and funded pursuant to Pub. L. No. 116-6, 133 Stat. 13, 115.

The Inland Action Mentoring Collaborative (IAMC), led by the Youth Action Project, will implement a Collaborative Mentoring Program that targets youth in the Inland Empire, specifically San Bernardino County’s school districts. Targeted youth will be enrolled within the Colton and Hesperia Unified School Districts. Common characteristics defining targeted youth include youth (1) possessing certain predictive/correlative characteristics, (2) involved in the juvenile justice system, and/or (3) residing in an environment with high rates of parental incarceration, community violence, drug markets, gang concentration, and failing schools. Program services will be provided for 2 years to targeted youth as they progress through high school. The RED Expansion Project adopted the Eisenhower Quantum Opportunities Best Practice Model to address the service needs of the targeted population. IAMC’s selected program design serves to increase positive behaviors; prevent drug abuse; foster increased academic performance, career mentoring, and postsecondary education after graduation; and provide support for individuals receiving substance abuse treatment. Further, IAMC’s plan also seeks to reduce negative behaviors among youth including truancy, dropping out of school, delinquency, and crime. The project design, inputs, activities, and output is supported by the following strategies that will elevate outcomes associated with project goals and objectives: (1) improving academic achievement among targeted youth supported by mentoring that fosters increased youth participation in positive youth development activities; (2) decreasing problem behaviors among targeted youth by mentoring youth on resiliency and decision making; and (3) engaging youth in positive leadership roles and activities by involving them in youth leadership projects and democracy-building activities—as designed by the program’s leadership and advocacy training. CA/NCF