An area youth mentoring partnership has awarded grants to eight mentoring organizations with the aim of increasing the number of mentors available and expanding existing programs in the metropolitan area.
The grants awarded by the Midlands Mentoring Partnership total nearly $283,000, said Deborah Neary, the partnership's executive director.
All of the funds for the one-year grants, the organization's first, come from private donors. The group's goal, Neary said, is to award grants annually.
The partnership, made up of 12 mentoring organizations in the community, has worked together for the past decade, sharing resources and raising awareness about mentoring, Neary said. The group has worked in collaboration with Building Bright Futures, a local education-focused philanthropy effort.
Mentoring, she said, provides a host of benefits for young people, including improving school attendance, grades and peer relationships.
“It's something that research shows makes a tremendous impact in the life of a young person,” she said.
And that kind of success doesn't necessarily take a huge commitment on the part of mentors. “It only takes one hour a week for a person to have that kind of impact on a young person in their community,” she said.
Neary said she currently is aware of about 3,000 mentor-mentee relationships in the community, although she acknowledged that there undoubtedly are more.
The partnership's aims include helping groups add to those numbers and bringing nationals standards for mentoring to groups that aren't already using them.
Partnership members were eligible to apply for grants to expand programs. Those that received grants were:
• All Our Kids, $75,000 to expand its mentoring program to serve 75 disadvantaged sixth-graders from four schools — Field Club Elementary, Franklin Elementary, Jackson Elementary and Howard Kennedy Elementary.
• Release Ministries, $65,000 to serve an additional 120 mentees.
• TeamMates, $55,000 to hire a Bellevue Public Schools coordinator and a screening and retention specialist.
Nonmembers were eligible for grants to build capacity. The recipients are:
• Goodwill Industries, $16,000 to expand its Goodwill's Good Guides Mentoring Program. It matches at-risk youth, primarily those in the criminal justice system, with role models. Goodwill currently serves 100 mentees and plans to add 25.
• Hope Center for Kids, $12,500 to help launch a new mentoring program that would serve up to 15 students.
• Midwest Trailblazers Youth Program, $20,000 to formalize mentoring activities associated with its basketball program, including hiring a full-time director. It now serves 137 mentees and plans to add 63.
• One Hundred Black Men of Omaha, $19,000 to start a new mentoring program.
• South Omaha Community Care Council, $20,000 for a collaborative project with the Omaha Public Schools to start a peer-to-peer mentoring program with Omaha South High as a pilot school. Twenty ninth-grade English language learners with other risk factors would be selected as mentees. Ten South seniors and 10 adults would be trained as mentors.
Contact the writer:
444-1223, julie.anderson@owh.com
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