Adult-child mentoring relationships that support the efforts of educators and other professionals who are committed to the interests of such children can significantly impact the lives of children growing up in Marion County.
The MYKIDS Program was implemented in November 2003 after a year of research and planning at Julian Coleman Middle School. Thirty-five trained adult mentors meet twice a month with more than 100 students from Coleman, Decatur Township Middle School and South Wayne Junior High School. South Wayne was added this year.
Each trained mentor has undergone a complete criminal history/background check and is provided a copy of curriculum materials specifically written for middle school youth by Dr. Harold Davis entitled, "Talks My Father (or Mother) Never Had with Me." The materials were updated this year.
The second component of the Prosecutor's Mentor Program is the MCPO Mentor Network. The Network meets quarterly, bringing together community mentoring programs to provide an avenue of communication, collaboration and training targeted to the mentoring mission. This Mentor Network also assists community mentoring programs by providing limited criminal history and background checks for their potential mentors.
The MCPO Mentor Network goals for the coming year include continued efforts to help facilitate, develop and maintain a strong infrastructure within our community to meet the goal of service to youth. We will offer more informative quarterly network meetings with speakers and training relevant to the mentoring mission and complete and distribute a MCPO Mentor Network Directory, which is currently in a final draft version