Kokomo — There are at least 300 Howard County elementary students who need mentors in the Project 30 mentoring program.
Mentors are also needed for at-risk alternative school students, teen moms and children who have an incarcerated parent, all in Howard County.
Organizers hope to encourage more people to be mentors Tuesday in a recognition of National Mentoring Month. It begins at noon on the first floor of City Hall, in Council Chambers.
“The city of Kokomo is proud to promote the many organizations dedicated to reaching out to our youth,” Mayor Greg Goodnight said. “One-on-one mentoring is proven effective and positively impacts the lives of kids and our community.”
Statewide, about 1,300 children are on waiting lists to be matched with a mentor, according to Bill Stanczykiewicz, president of the Indiana Youth Institute, which launched the Indiana Mentoring Partnership in 2010. The partnership has helped recruit about 800 new mentors.
Travis Taflinger, co-founder of Bridges Outreach, which runs the Project 30 mentoring program, said the mentoring awareness day is meant to encourage people to give one hour a week to a child. There are many diverse opportunities in Howard County, he said.
His program works with elementary children at the Kokomo-Center and Taylor Community Schools. New Leaf Mentoring focuses on children with an incarcerated parent. The Crossing alternative school needs adults to provide career and life skill guidance to high school students, and Parent2Parent is looking for mentors for teen parents at Kokomo High School.
Representatives of all four of those programs will be available at Tuesday’s event, and will offer information about their programs.
“If people are willing to mentor, they’ll find something next Tuesday,” Taflinger said.
Project 30 began nearly two years ago, and currently has 275 mentors serving more than 300 children, for a half hour per week during the school day. Taflinger said many mentors also attend their student’s school programs and sporting events as well, and provide not only academic help, but a listening ear. He said mentors have helped after learning their student was not going to have Christmas, or that no adult was attending their sporting events.
Taflinger said nearly every elementary has a waiting list of children who could use a mentor. He estimates 20 percent of the students, or about 650 to 700 children, need mentors.
Dale Bliss, executive director of New Leaf Mentoring, estimates he will have 300 to 400 children eligible for his program, which pairs adults with children ages 4 to 17 who have a parent in jail or prison.
He said nationally, one in every 43 children has a parent incarcerated, and those children have special needs.
“These children just need someone to know they are there .. they have a lot of shame and guilt and anger,” he said.
Many live in a drug or crime culture, and some have had to move in with grandparents or other friends or family.
“These kids have a lot of fear. They don’t know what their future holds. They deal with a lot of worry. They wonder if their mom or dad is OK in jail.”
Because of the special needs the children have, Bliss said New Leaf provides extensive training and support, including quarterly training. Maple Grove Church, which is sponsoring the non-denominational program, is trying to raise money to help mentors financially as well, he said.
Bliss said because the program is just getting off the ground, he is not yet enrolling children.
“We’re trying to build an army of mentors first,” he said, with a goal of enrolling 100 mentors in 2011.
Mentors must pass a criminal background check and make a commitment to meet with the child for at least an hour a week, for 52 weeks, he said. These children lack consistency in their lives, he said, and having a stable mentor makes a difference.
Bliss said children of incarcerated parents are more likely to end up in jail themselves without outside intervention, which is why his program is important.
“Our vision is to impact our community, to change some of the character of our community. These are our future law enforcement officials, teachers and employees. Even if we just impact 100 of our kids, that can have an impact on our community.”