Proposal Would Expand Youth Mentoring in Milwaukee

LaNelle Ramey. Photo courtesy of PEARLS for Teen Girls.

The Milwaukee County Board’s Committee on Finance approved funding for a proposal designed to expand mentoring for Milwaukee-area youth.

If approved by the full board, the county would give $250,000 to MENTOR Greater Milwaukee, a local non-profit seeking to expand the Milwaukee area’s mentoring services and training. The funding would come out of the county’s allocation of federal funding through the American Rescue Plan Act.

MENTOR Executive Director LaNelle Ramey told supervisors Thursday that his organization would use the funds to expand mentoring in Milwaukee through community training for adults interested in becoming a mentor, peer-mentoring in Milwaukee schools targeted at helping young people provide support for each other and the creation of new mentoring programs.

The proposal has the support of the county’s Children, Youth and Family Services Division. “We also believe and understand the value of mentoring and the impact that these relationships have on our youth,” said Administrator Kelly Pethke.

MENTOR Greater Milwaukee is an affiliate of the non-profit organization MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership. It was created through a partnership of Milwaukee Public Schools, the City of Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Bucks with the goal of building capacity among institutions and organizations that offer mentoring services.

The funds will also help the organization expand and advertise what is called the “mentoring connector,” Ramey said, which works as an index of mentoring programs and organizations throughout the Milwaukee area. “We want to make it easy for families to be able to select mentoring programs based on their needs,” Ramey said. Pethke added CYFS will also communicate opportunities to the children and families in the division’s network.

The organization hopes to provide training for mentoring to 750 people through its Mentoring Mindsets workshops. “So adults are more comfortable before they’re partnering with organizations to be a mentor,” Ramey said, adding that it’s “a critical thing” to understand “what that means in that young person’s life.”

The organization also plans to create 20 peer-mentoring programs in local schools.  “We firmly believe that for young people to be mentored, we want them to mentor as well,” Ramey said. “So whatever that may look like whether it’s seniors mentoring freshman, if it’s middle school kids are mentoring one another.”

Additionally, the funds will support the creation of 25 new, trained mentoring programs in the Milwaukee area, according to a report prepared by CYFS.

The board’s Finance Committee unanimously recommended approval of the funding proposal. It next goes to the full board for a final vote.