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Mid Valley Mentors is another great program you will find in the Oregon Mentors database.  We serve students in Marion and Polk Counties.

posted 3 years, 3 months ago
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Mentorship is an incredibly powerful tool in helping all students, but especially at-risk and system-involved students stay in school, out of trouble and to consider a future in higher education.   Mid Valley Mentors is a Salem based non profit that provides volunteer mentors to primarily juvenile justice-involved students to support their education and reduce recidivism. 

In Marion County 2855 youth were arrested in 2008.  42% of those students were failing two or more classes and 18% had already dropped out. 

There is a significant correlation between juvenile delinquency and school failure.  Mentorship has proven to be an incredibly effective way to help these students stay in school and help them avoid returning to the juvenile system as youth or worse, committing crimes as adults.  A shared characteristic of system involved youth is a lack of support and guidance from positive adult role models.  Something as simple as a positive adult role model in the form of a mentor can make change the course of a young person’s life.

Did you know that according to a 2007 Marion County jail survey, 71% of inmates reported being high school drop-outs?  Each year 700 adults reenter Marion County after incarceration. 73% of incarcerated adults are parents; many are parents of juvenile justice involved youth.  If we do not help our students stay in school now, we will be paying for many of them to be incarcerated later, and the transgenerational cycle of juvenile delinquency and adult incarceration will continue uninterrupted.

Help us engage at-risk students in one-to-one mentoring relationships and break the cycle.   As a mentor your simple, positive support as a role model for just one hour a week can mean the difference between a child ending up in the prison system as an adult or going on to higher education and becoming a successful, contributing member of society. 

Our education system may be flawed, but even as it is, our community's children are much better off in a flawed system than in the juvenile system.  Help us stop a cycle that is destroying our communities. 

Become a Mentor.
Change a Life.

Suzanne Jorgensen
Mid Valley Mentors
www.midvalleymentors.org

posted 3 years, 3 months ago
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