Grantees

The Watershed Mentoring program will increase healthy behaviors and reduce risky behaviors in youth and young teens through the consistent, helping friendship of a caring adult mentor.

To assist DREAM in providing long-lasting mentoring relationships between Bennington College students and children living in the Willowbrook Housing Community in Bennington, VT

For nearly 50 years Windsor County Mentors has provided mentoring relationships for Windsor County children and youth. Through our school-based and community-based one- on-one mentoring programs, WCM matches a caring adult with an at-risk youth. At the very heart of mentoring is the assurance that a young person will have someone who cares about them. Someone they can rely on to help them deal with day-to-day challenges and who makes them feel like they matter. Research on the impact of mentoring confirms that quality mentoring relationships fundamentally change the direction of a young person's life for the better. We are planning to double the number of mentoring pairs under our program.

Provide pregnant and parenting teenage girls with group, one-on-one and peer mentoring to help them and their children thrive physically, emotionally and socio-economically.

Youth First Mentoring plans to boost the protective factors of their established community mentoring program by offering an enrichment program that involves youth in the arts, sciences, outdoors, service, and wellness. This will close the opportunity gap at-risk youth face, enhance youth and mentor recruitment, strengthening social connectedness, resilience and outcomes for youth. The youth they serve are often deprived of typical enriching and educational experiences because of the risk factors they face (poverty, parental absence, e.g.). They will augment this with an educational program for mentors on adolescent development, adverse childhood experiences, and mental health first aid, which will boost protective factors in their mentor relationships.