What are some of the key accomplishments of your organization? *
Rosco Millie’s organization has been the main hope in our community. It saves the youth from drugs, early pregnancy, and criminal behavior while impacting them with life skills and responsibility that can help them become better members of society. Our intended accomplishment at the end of the program:
- Significantly higher attendance and grades for intervention youths in each academic calendar: We strive to help our youths improve in academic performance in STEM subjects, among other subjects. We encourage after school tutoring and give the beneficiaries a mentor to walk them through the subjects. We mentor the beneficiaries on how best they can plan their studies time and improve their academic performance. Our mentors also assist the beneficiaries in ensuring that they get the emotional support they need for them to be present in school. This includes digging deep into the family and social issues that affect school performance.
- Drug abuse abstinence and keeping the youths away from Delinquency and criminal behavior: We have seen thousands of youths in our community languish from drug and alcohol abuse. Agents of Change Mentoring Program has been at the forefront of making the youth busy with meaningful activities to keep away from drugs by taking them to trips as an exploration journey and letting them participate in a meaningful competitive game; we have successfully helped them channel their energy to impactful activities. In addition, we are expanding to champion an outreach that will be geared towards sensitizing the youth against drug abuse.
Setting the youth for Employment: We have seen the pain that it cost the community to have jobless youths. Rosco Millie’s organization has been at the forefront of offering a mentorship program that assists the youth reach their life goals. Apart from strengthening academic performance, we believe that the youths can be successfully productive in the job market when their talent is nurtured. We encourage talent, help them youths in subjects selection based on their strength, and give the required emotional support to help them achieve their life goals. We walk with them every step of the way. We intend to complement the education sector by providing the youths with employability and soft skills that can and help them acquire jobs for the youths who don’t make it to college or higher education levels.
Objectives of the program
Agents of Change Mentoring Program is aimed at supporting young people to manage their own learning in order to maximize their potential, develop their skills, improve their performance, and become citizens with value. The key objective of the program includes
- Empowering the young people from low-income groups, and young people at risk in our communities for them to have a fulfilling future.
- Offering life and career-building skills through mentorship programs, events, and sports activities.
- Building and developing leadership and responsibility among young people
- Building confidence and communication skills among the participants
- Fostering accountability skills among the youths
- Mobilizing the youth to act and impact change
- Collaborating and partnering with local and national community organizations and leaders to increase the visibility of youth empowerment initiatives within our community.
Who would benefit from your program?
The Agents of Change Mentoring Program targets young people from both genders between the ages of 10 and 18 years living in Lauderhill, Florida. The youths come from low-income families, group homes, and street families. Our target beneficiaries are categorized as vulnerable groups because they have few opportunities in life and higher chances of finding themselves in drug abuse, criminal behaviors, and early pregnancy. The majority of the youths come from single parents who have been left with many kids to take care of. The girls that we are targeting have a risk of falling into vices such as prostitution in order for them to attain a livelihood. The young boys are at the risk of turning into criminal activities such as theft and looting, being used for ill political ambitions, and languishing in dugs. Apart from the vulnerability of our target audience being backed up by the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (2019), as the members of our community, we have seen the majority of the youths die a premature death as a result of being gang down, drug abuse-related complications and young girls who would have contributed to the better of our society tomorrow going through sexual assault and abuse due to engaging in prostitution. The Agents of Change Mentoring Program is here to prevent one more death and act as a helping hand and a stepping stone that can lead these young people to a great destiny that they are destined for.
What method(s) would you use to evaluate the program’s success? *
- Number and percent of youths who increased their weekly hours of homework/reading: We will create an Excel-sheet which will allow the youths to indicate the after-school tutoring and reading hours. In the future, we’ll build an online student management system that will include the different subjects and tracked the subject studied (for the self -study sessions), the time logged in, and the time logged out. This will help us in automated tracking the number of after school hours spent on studying and the impact on the preformed improvement.
- Number and percent of youth who improved their test performance/ overall GPA and graduated from school. This is going to the determined from the termly school report as per the school calendar.
- Number and percent of youth who showed improved self-esteem and decreased alienation. The participating youths will carry out an entry screening test, which will be able to give us the key areas of struggles. This will assist us in offering customized mentorship programs based on the emotional and social needs of each beneficiary. For the beneficiaries that indicated low self-esteem, lack of confidence while communicating, we will engage the beneficiaries in different public speaking and mentorship activities that will improve their confidence. This also will be measured from the quarterly surveys that the beneficiaries will under-take
- Number and percent of youth who show decreased substance abuse, arrests, gang involvement, and improved relationships. This will be measured by the monthly and quarterly surveys that the youth will participate in. In addition, each mentor assigned to the participating beneficiaries will be able to give a professional report on drugs and substance abuse and a general change in the attitude of the mentored youth.
What dollar amount are you seeking in relation to the total need? *
$20,000
How would your organization use Trust Fund money? (Be as precise as possible) *
The amount will be used to meet the operating expenses of the program for the year 2020/2021. The key operating cost needed includes staffing cost and cost of purchasing program supplies.
Current year’s operating budget, if available*
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WHO ARE THE MEMBERS OF YOUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS?
Member 1(indicate name and title)
Member 2
Member 3