New Orleans – NOLA CARES Mentoring Movement has announced the beginning of its efforts to recruit local mentors will to spend time addressing troubled Black youths in New Orleans. The NOLA CARES Mentoring Movement in New Orleans, Louisiana is an affiliate “Circle” of the National Cares Mentoring Movement (NCMM). National CARES Mentoring Movement, founded by Susan L. Taylor is dedicated to recruiting and connecting mentors with local youth-serving and mentoring organizations to help guide struggling Black children to academic and social success, and to closing the huge gap between the relatively few Black mentors and millions of our vulnerable children.
NOLA CARES will initially begin this fall school year by partnering with PEN OR PENCIL , an initiative founded in 2005 by the National Alliance of Faith and Justice (NAFJ). PEN OR PENCIL involves an intergenerational, interactive, and relationship support process which encourages bonding, trust, resilience in the face of life trials like generations who persevered before them. PEN is short for penitentiary and PENCIL represents education.
Through a Memorandum of Understanding with Project Village, the youth serving component of the National Baptist Convention USA, Inc.’s Prison Ministry and Criminal Justice Commission headquartered in Baton Rouge, NAFJ and the New Orleans CARES Circle will serve a predominance of youth who are victims of and engaged in high risk and violent behaviors, to include emotional and learning disabilities. The partnership will offer initial priority to students who are enrolled in middle and high schools in the Recovery School District of Louisiana in New Orleans under development through the Safe Schools Healthy Students Initiative. Expansion of the regional collaborative will give priority to middle and high schools in the system located in East Baton Rouge and others to be identified. Project Village currently gives priority to youth who have one or both parents in prison. New Orleans’ initial efforts will focus with troubled youths attending John McDonough High School and L. B. Landry High School in New Orleans.
The New Orleans’ “Circle”, led by Bishop Tommy Triplett of United Fellowship Full Gospel Baptist Church and The New Orleans’s Agenda Vincent Sylvain is comprised of community members who work together to provide the driving force behind NCMM’s mission-to create a highly visible and effective national mentoring campaign targeting the Black community. The specific goals of the NOLA CARES Mentoring Movement are (1) to bring guidance to the lives of youngsters by pairing them with organizations that offer mentoring services and programs, and (2) to significantly increase the pool of caring Black mentors.
The NOLA CARES Mentoring Movement is a call to action to every able and caring Black adult to help end the crisis in our community by mentoring our young people who are at risk and by recruiting other caring adults to mentor. NCMM does not offer mentoring services; instead, we encourage local leaders to raise awareness of the need and benefits of mentoring, as well as recruit mentors for organizations that provide mentoring and other youth-support services.
NOLA CARES will target the needs of Black youngsters, who are greatly overrepresented on long waiting lists for mentors. Unfortunately, Black adult mentors are grossly underrepresented as volunteers for the youngsters in the Black community.
The NOLA CARES Circle is dedicated to recruiting and connecting mentors with local youth-serving organizations to help guide our struggling children to academic and social success. Research proves that mentoring is a low-cost, high-results solution to a deepening crisis. It has the power to transform the lives of even the most challenged children-and we plan to utilize that power in New Orleans.
“We are losing our future, one child at a time, which is why the CARES Mentoring Movement is crucial. These are the chilling facts . . .
National statistics:
In some cities, only 18% of Black boys graduate from high school.
57% of Black fourth graders are functionally illiterate.
2.4 million Black children have a parent in prison.
HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death of young Black women.
Homicide is the leading cause of death of young Black men.
Every day more than 1,000 Black teenagers are arrested.
Behind all the harsh numbers are youngsters who are the real-world consequences of broken educational systems, broken homes, and broken communities. By working together, we can void these dire statistics.”
NOLA CARES Mentoring Movement encourage interested individuals to visit the National Cares Mentoring Movement online at www.caresmentoring.org to learn more about their efforts as well as how one can join the local Movement.
