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Kids-Mentoring-Kids
Emplacement
For an innovative support system which empowers the relentlessly increasing numbers of American youth whose parents are sick, deceased and missing (overall 8% of American youth are being raised by grandparents and,in some cities,up to 25% of youth are now in formal or informal foster care) to build their community, we train older teens with missing or ill (particularly those whose parents have AIDS) parents to be mentors for younger children in the same difficult situations.
A propos de vous
A propos de vous
Prénom
Chris
Nom
Norwood
URL du site Web
Organization
Health People:Community Preventive Health Institute
Pays
États Unis, NY, Bronx County
A propos de votre organisation
Nom
Health People:Community Preventive Health Institute
Site Web
Téléphone
(718) 585-8585
Adresse
552 Southern Boulevard
Pays
États Unis, NY, Bronx County
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Your idea
Name Your Project
Kids-Mentoring-Kids
Country your work focuses on
États Unis, NY, Bronx County
Describe Your Idea
For an innovative support system which empowers the relentlessly increasing numbers of American youth whose parents are sick, deceased and missing (overall 8% of American youth are being raised by grandparents and,in some cities,up to 25% of youth are now in formal or informal foster care) to build their community, we train older teens with missing or ill (particularly those whose parents have AIDS) parents to be mentors for younger children in the same difficult situations.
Website URL
Innovation
What makes your idea unique?
Training teens to be mentors for younger children was largely unheard of when we started this program. However, this innovative model, which we first focused on youth whose parent(s) had AIDS, or who were orphaned, enables us to reach youth who are at the highest need for mentoring---low-income kids angry and depressed by parental death, chronic illness or disappearance---yet who are unlikely to enter, or even know about, traditional mentoring programs. Equally important and unique, our Kids-Mentoring-Kids model provides support and positive youth development for two sets of youth at once. The older teens trained as mentors gain responsibility and a role in the community; the younger kids gain mentors who truly understand their problems and challenges. By giving teens real responsibility to make progress, despite very serious obstacles, we have also developed a model with wide appeal for kids who don't have ordinary social supports; both young men and young women in equal numbers wish to be mentors. The mentors and mentees meet together on Saturdays and daily during summer vacation, with adult backup and supervision always present,which provides an experience where there is constant support. This innovation results in turning youth who are often the most troubled into community builders who can directly see their own ability to build the lives of other youth. This is a major, critical change in the youth community where, unfortunately, kids whose parents are missing often take out their disappointment on each other. Finally, Kids-Helping-Kids is affordable and replicable, qualities that give it unique practical potential for the wide implementation needed to build engaged and strong youth communities in the face of the millions of American kids who are parentless.
Do you have a patent for this idea?
Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
What impact have you had?
We think our major impact is to repeatedly demonstrate that youth in very difficult situations---including those who are orphans, in foster care, or living with chronically ill parents---want to, and will engage in community building.More than 150 older teens in these situations have been mentors. Moreover, evaluation of Kids-Mentoring-Kids under the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development showed several positive outcomes for early adolescents in the program as mentees, particularly a significantly lower attraction to drugs than other children in the same situation. The researchers were also impressed by the retention of teen mentors---especially considering that, at the time, all the kids came from families where a parent had AIDS. Another important outcome is that virtually all these youth stay in school---even though they live in an area with a more than 50% dropout rate. This year, for example, every single one of the Kids-Mentoring-Kids mentors who are seniors are both graduating from high school---and continuing their education. The overall impact is to constantly demonstrate to youth in difficult situations that they have the ability to build their lives and build their community, enabling them to develop both a vision of community (in this case a safe community where kids can help each other) and practical skills like organizing. The social skills involved in talking out problems and looking for solutions that result from the teens holding support groups for the younger children and the process of directly helping someone else, whether it is a teen listening to a younger child's worries or joining in the summer reading program through which the teens help the younger kids improve their reading reinforce positive development. Aside from the positive impact on their own development, these youth community building activities engage kids with confidence in their community on a level we hope will have lifelong impact.
Problem
The problem we are addressing is to develop an effective and practical counter-force to the collapse of ordinary community engagement and social supports which has resulted from America's ever increasing parentlessness. AS noted, some 8% of American youth are being primarily raised by grandparent(s); in at least 5 cities up to 25% of youth in households are foster children; and the United States has the most AIDS orphans and children being raised by a parent---usually a single mother--who is ill with HIV/AID in the Western world. Yet, the country as a whole seems unable to even see mass parentlessness as a major issue requiring careful attention; even if it did, there would never be enough traditional mentoring or support or counseling programs for these millions of youth. Our approach is to help youth, themselves, build communities, where they support and help each other, an engagement which not only benefits them, but starts to rebuild community involvement and much needed social capital in neighborhoods where the social fabric has been shredded.
Actions
Since first starting the program for children and teens whose parents had AIDS---at a time when these parents had very high death rates---we have begun to update and enrich Kids-Mentoring-Kids This has included completely revising the training curriculum for the mentors and adding elements of positive youth development such as the reading program. In addition to youth in HIV-affected families, we now also have other kids with sick and missing parents as mentors and mentees. We are working especially to promote teen mentoring and our model which includes having obtained a 5 year program evaluation (by recognized outside evaluators) under the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. And we are undertaking a special fund-raising drive to be prepared with matching funds when---as expected in the fall---community groups with innovative ideas, can start to apply for funds through their local "intermediary funders" in the new Social Innovation Fund.
Results
By updating and enriching the program, we expect to develop a well-rounded program where mentors and mentees develop more skills to both work together and engage with their community. (In the early years, with the large numbers of parental deaths, we had to be more focused on grief and bereavement.) Though efforts to promote teen mentoring we hope to make it a national movement; after years of watching so many children stranded by death and parentlessness, we have concluded that teen mentoring, with the vision and support of a national movement behind it, is absolutely crucial to having strong American youth communities where kids can thrive even in the adverse circumstances so many face. Through targeted fund-raising, we expect to take key steps to start to scale-up Kids-Mentoring-Kids.
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Please address each year separately, if possible.
Over the next three years, our aim is to scale-up Kids-Mentoring-Kids to position it as a national program. To do this, we have to first obtain intermediate funding to increase the number of youth in the program and increase the sites. By implementing ---and evaluating--- this intermediate scale-up, we enhance our prospects for "full scale up" funding from foundations which are increasingly interested in not just funding, but also providing ongoing technical assistance to expand and strengthen promising programs.
Year One: Obtain funding to quadruple Kids-Mentoring-Kids participants from 35 to 140 while implementing Kids-Mentoring-Kids at a minimum of one more site.
Years One and Two: Evaluate comprehensive youth development, mentoring attitudes and satisfaction and youth engagement and community building activities in expanded program.
Year Three: Seek Funding for a Major Scale-Up
What would prevent your project from being a success?
The United States, as mentioned, seems to have enormous difficulty---even in its philanthropic community---in facing parentlessness as a major, and defining youth and national issue, and one that is decisive in determining whether communities will be strong and vibrant. A revealing measure of this difficulty is the American disinterest in its own AIDS orphans; despite all the money Americans allocate to AIDS orphans elsewhere, neither the federal government---or any of the major foundations involved in helping orphans in other countries---provide any money for programs for AIDS orphans in the United States. In sum, it is hard for our project to be a success unless parentlessness---along with a national vision of building strong youth communities even for the most left out and abandoned youth--- finally becomes a major public concern. Equally, while teen mentoring is now more accepted (when we first started, both public and private funders invariably required a one-on-one adult to-child mentoring model), it is still very hard to fund. We have to look at how large problems are in looking for solutions which are actually feasible i.e. there simply will never be adult mentors for these millions of youth. Also, funders have to mean it when they say they want "innovative" models---and, just as it takes time to nurture children, be willing to take a chance to nurture programs to the point that it is constructive and actually useful to evaluate them.
How many people will your project serve annually?
101‐1000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
$100 ‐ 1000
Does your project seek to have an impact on public policy?
Oui
Viabilité
A quel étape votre projet en est-il ?
En place depuis plus de 5 ans
Votre organisation est-elle une
organisation à but non lucratif
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Oui
If yes, provide organization name.
Health People: Community Preventive Health Institute.
How long has this organization been operating?
Plus 5 années
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
Oui
Does your organization have a non-monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Oui
Does your organization have a non-monetary partnerships with businesses?
Oui
Does your organization have a non-monetary partnerships with government?
Oui
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
The Executive Director is on the Board of Directors of the Public Health Association of New York City and the newly established Community Advisory Board of Montefiore Medical Center. Through the former, we maintain relationships and mutual interest with a wide range of New York City health institutions, government agencies and providers whom, over time, are potential partners in seriously targeting mentoring to parentless youth.; through the latter we maintain ongoing relationships with many local, Bronx institutions who are potential partners. HP is a member of the Mentoring Partnership of NYC through which we promote our model and work with other programs.Also, HP is an original community partner in a new initiative called Pause to Support a Cause, started by the Chief Marketing Officer Council (CMO), which represents 5,000 businesses and major companies. This initiative enables the businesses to undertake their marketing research online, with participants donating the usual payment for completing market surveys to participating nonprofits. (See www.SurveyforGood.org) Some major participating companies have a real interest in mentoring.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization?
1. The interest of a foundation that will nurture a project which clearly has the inherent challenges of being built on the leadership potential of parentless youth along with the demonstrated potential for unusual success in building engaged youth and youth communities where they are now nonexistent.
2. National legislation to provide targeted mentoring programs for parentless youth, including youth being raised by grandparents and AIDS orphans
3. A national determination not just to have "programs" for parentless youth, but strategies and models that see these kids as something beside their "problems" and assure these youth have the opportunity to develop sustaining values, a sense of their own powers to help others and be part building their community.
The Story
What was the defining moment that you led to this innovation?
Health People was founded in 1990 as a women's AIDS peer education program in the South Bronx. With most of our peer educators having AIDS---at a time when women lived an average of a year after diagnosis---we were faced with constant deaths of mothers. The mothers asked us over and over "to do something for their kids." At first, we just tried to give the moms and kids some pleasant family time and on weekends we would take trips to museums, the zoo or other places so these families would have time together and good memories. If the mothers were too sick to go, other people, including the staff (many of whom also had AIDS) would volunteer to help with the kids. From this, we decided we needed the consistenacy of a mentoring program. However, with so many adults ill,themselves, or overwhelmed by illness in the family, we realized we could not start a "regular" mentoring program with adult mentors. Finally, a grandmother urged the idea of training the teens as mentors. WE didn't know if this would work---but it seemed to be the only possibility for a mentoring program in the situation we faced---and it did work!
Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.
Chris Norwood, a graduate of Wellesley College, is the founder and Executive Director of Health People: Community Preventive Health Institute. A writer and author of 4 books, Ms. Norwood wrote Advice for Life: A Woman’s Guide to AIDS (Pantheon), the first book on women and AIDS. After that, she determined to start a program that would give low-income, minority women affected by HIV/AIDS---who, at the time, were receiving almost no attention even as their HIV rates soared---a chance to be leaders and educators in the epidemic. She founded a women’s AIDS peer education program---then known as Health Force---under Bronx Community College in 1990. After three years, men asked to join the program---so it expanded---and then, at the request of parents (most of whom were dying within a year of AIDS diagnosis at the time), we started an unique mentoring program, Kids-Helping-Kids, which trains older teens in HIV-affected families to be mentors for younger kids in the same difficult situation. Over time, the program expanded its powerful peer model to asthma, diabetes and smoking cessation and, in 2004, spun off as Health People, an independent non-for-profit with the mission to “empower and train residents of communities overwhelmed by chronic disease to become leaders and educators in effectively preventing ill health, hospitalization and unnecessary death.” This mission really states the philosophy of Health People. As a founder,Ms. Norwood was focused on developing community ideas and did not start the organization with over-riding “founder" ideas---except that administration should seriously support and empower low-income, minority women, men and youth to rebuild their own health and, by doing that, rebuild communities which are now absolutely unnecessarily crippled by chronic disease.
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Email from Changemakers
If through another, please provide the name of the organization or company
 | LBWright said: This is a great Idea! The program gives the older kids the boost in self esteem that comes from being able to positively impact the ... about this Competition Entry. - il y a 547 jours lire plus > |
| horland said: This is a very innovative program by an expert who has worked in this field for many years and knows what is possible using limited ... about this Competition Entry. - il y a 548 jours lire plus > |
| Edwin Jimenez said: As a student of the South Bronx, I know first hand how important a program like Kids-Helping-Kids is. This program offers an ... about this Competition Entry. - il y a 548 jours lire plus > |
| chris norwood updated this Competition Entry. - il y a 574 jours |
| chris norwood updated this Competition Entry. - il y a 575 jours |
| chris norwood a soumis cette idée. - il y a 582 jours |
