Using Warwick template, Mentoring Partnership to expand program

By Kelcy Dolan
Posted 5/31/16

With nearly $200,000 in grants from United Way of Rhode Island, the Rhode Island Mentoring Partnership is looking to expand services in several different directions, benefiting not only children throughout the state but also young adults.

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Using Warwick template, Mentoring Partnership to expand program

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With nearly $200,000 in grants from United Way of Rhode Island, the Rhode Island Mentoring Partnership is looking to expand services in several different directions, benefiting not only children throughout the state but also young adults.

As part of United Way of Rhode Island’s (UWRI) new strategic plan, “Live United 2020,” which hopes to change the lives of 250,000 Rhode Islanders by the year 2020, the community organization has committed $12 million of grants through 2019. This year UWRI has already awarded $3.1 million.

UWRI received 224 proposals, totaling $16.5 million in funding requests. A review committee spent nearly six months going through the proposals before making a recommendation to the United Way Community Investment Advisory Committee. RIMP received a total of $175,000 of the final $3.1 million that was disbursed.

Anthony Maione, president and CEO of UWRI, said in a statement that the Live United 2020 goal may be “ambitious,” but after reviewing the proposals in the last grant cycle “captured the forward thinking we need to make the vision a reality.”

RIMP received two grants from UWRI, one for $100,000 to assist in expanding the Mentoring Partnership’s recruitment efforts, as well as begin a program at Calcutt Middle School in Central Falls. The other grant of $75,000 will help to foster a new partnership between RIMP and the Institute for the Study & Practice of Non-Violence (ISPN).

Jo-Ann Schofield, president and CEO of RIMP, explained that the organization will be able to hire a recruitment specialist, someone who has an “expertise in creating positive relationships, identifying good partnerships,” and will be able to help increase the number of volunteers so more students can be paired up and taken off the waiting list throughout RIMP’s 50-plus programs statewide. The grants will help improve recruitment efforts, to ensure more children can benefit from a mentoring relationship, she said.

She said that oftentimes the agency reaches out to local community organizations and businesses for volunteers, hopefully getting more than one at a time, but unfortunately only a portion of the people they speak to will volunteer and, occasionally, “it does move forward one volunteer at a time.”

RIMP will also start a program in Central Falls at Calcutt Middle School using the Warwick program as a “blueprint.” Because the community is small, within the first year, over a six-month period of growth, the new program will have 15 mentoring pairs.

Thanks to the grant, the Mentoring Partnership expects to increase their mentoring pairs by 250

“It’s a big commitment, but we are excited for the challenge,” she said. “Our kids deserve this. This is the time for this work, to better the future of our children and prepare our future workforce.”

The secondary grant will help RIMP to foster and grow their new partnership with the ISPN. The ISPN is a non-profit organization that works to reduce violence throughout the state. The group partners with various community institutions such as law enforcement and hospitals to work with at-risk populations on nonviolence training, street outreach and enrichment activities, among other initiatives.

“Let’s Make This Work,” the collaborative partnership between the two organizations, will help young adults 18 through 24 participating in ISPN’s 10-month workforce training program.

Already the program partners with various companies to provide internships for participants, many of whom are “victims of their environment,” living in poverty, sex offenders, unwed parents or gang involved youth. With the help of RIMP, a mentoring component will be added to the program, pairing youth with a professional mentor either within or outside their intern placement.

PJ Fox, interim executive director of ISPN, said,  “Employment is one of the two absolutely proven factors in reducing violence.  We all know the key to success in the workforce is having people you can lean on and trust to give you good advice. We call these people mentors.”

Together, ISPN and RIMP will provide workshops to the businesses involved to gain a better understanding of those individuals they employ and the challenges they may come across to change the perception of these employees from “economic liabilities to social assets.”

Schofield said that RIMP had been looking for ways to expand, “their ability to create positive environments” to older aged youth and the partnership with ISPN was “very timely.” She explained that a negative first work experience, especially for at-risk youth who may already gravitate away from school and work, have a more difficult time finding new employment.

“In creating a more mentor-like partnership within the internships we create positive connections within the workforce, this way the partnership can be mutually beneficial,” said Schofield.

She said finding qualified mentors may be difficult because volunteers tend to prefer working with younger children, where they can “feed off the energy” of young students. For the young adults mentors would need to be willing to listen and help an individual who has had more life experience, and may have been through negative experiences in their lives.

For more information on RIMP or how to volunteer and a mentor visit their website www.mentorri.org.

For more information on United Way of Rhode Island visit www.LIVEUNITEDri.org.

For more information on the Institute for the Study & Practice of Non-Violence visit www.nonviolenceinstitute.org.

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