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Archives
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Gifford
Miller |
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Liz Krueger |
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Leslie Crocker Snyder |
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Catherine Stimpson |
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Eric Gioia |
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Adolfo Carrion Jr. |
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David Weprin |
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Featured Non Profit:
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Mentoring USA
Mentoring USA,
founded by Matilda Raffa Cuomo in 1995,
is an effective,
early-intervention
mentoring program to
prevent school
dropout. Providing
mentoring during
after school at
schools, community
centers, and foster
care agencies, the
program helps
children in grades
K-12 improve their
self-esteem, broaden
their visions of
opportunities and
succeed in school.
By matching a child
with a trained,
caring adult
volunteer mentor on
a one-to-one basis,
our site-based model
has proven to be
effective in helping
a child reach his or
her full potential.
As a result of the
mentoring
relationship, grades
go up, school
absenteeism goes
down and children
gain new confidence
and greater hope for
the future.
Mentoring USA
Program
General Programs -
Activities include
literacy and
computational games
and projects. These
materials include
topics such as
social studies,
nutrition, health,
community action,
career choices and
conflict resolution.
Foster Care Program
- Provides mentors
to children in
foster care - a
population which is
very needy of caring
adult mentors.
Mentors in this
program receive
special training and
support as to the
unique needs and
circumstances of the
children, from
Mentoring USA and
from private foster
care agencies that
Mentoring USA
collaborates with.
ESL Mentoring -
Addresses the
challenge of
education the
linguistically and
culturally diverse
students, English
Language Learners
who compromise 15%
of NYC public school
students. This
program gives each
student one-to-one
attention from an
adult trained in
English language
learning
complexities.
Bias-Related
Anti-Violence
Education ("BRAVE")
- Uses biographical
and autobiographical
material as a tool
to enhance
children's
self-esteem and
sense of cultural
heritage, to open up
discussions about
the heroes and
experiences of
various racial,
cultural and ethnic
groups and to
facilitate
discussions about
diversity,
overcoming
obstacles, tolerance
and non-violent
resolution of
conflict.
Law-Related Programs
- Most youths
growing up in
high-risk
environments have
only negative
experiences with the
law enforcement and
justice system. To
provide youth with
positive experiences
of the system,
Mentoring USA has
entered into
partnerships with
the NYC Police
Department, Federal
and State courts
through which police
officers, judges,
lawyers act as
one-to-mentors for
youth.
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Guest Editor: Matilda Raffa Cuomo
The Transforming Power of Music and Art
Since 1995, as an after-school mentoring program, Mentoring USA has supplemented the classroom activities by developing partnerships in the fields of music and the arts.
Through the years, Mentoring USA has continued to network with various artists, musicians, and dancers. Last year, we staged performances for the youth at various mentoring sites in conjunction with Musician’s Local 802, National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS,) Marie-Christine Giordano Dance Company, and the children’s music group, Caddywampus, to name a few. These partnerships enhance the lives of our mentees in many important ways.
In addition to the wonderful exposure and enjoyment of the arts, a completed artistic project can have a very therapeutic effect for a youth who may have never created anything positive before. Children who are not necessarily the best students enjoy finding an outlet for their other talents, and then self-esteem blossoms.
Mentoring USA continues its legacy as a high school dropout prevention program. Mentors can help children to work on the many skills that they will need to succeed in school using a variety of arts-based delivery methods. For example, writing projects need not take on just essay formats–mentors and youth can work together on screenwriting, TV sitcom writing, poetry, short stories and plays.
Mentoring USA is reaching out to the arts community to take part in our new BRAVE Juliana program, which uses basic mentoring concepts combined with books about multi-cultural awareness and conflict resolution activities to help strengthen children’s connections to their own heritage and develop respect for other cultures.
This year, with funding from the Juliana Valentine McCourt Children’s Education fund, we will be bringing two art and music–based interactive workshops for mentors and mentees at each of our sixty sites throughout the five boroughs. We are planning already the following activities for the fall:
Creating books under the direction of a children’s art therapist; assembling identity collages from magazines and personal photos; photography workshops in and around mentees’ neighborhoods; conflict resolution role-plays; children’s yoga, designed to teach relaxing breathing and de-escalation techniques; African drumming workshops; attending a concert; familiarizing the children with different instruments and music rhythms.
BRAVE Juliana activities encourage youth to learn about New York City’s diverse cultures and sub-cultures, with their unique traditions and languages. The mentees who absorb this knowledge of their own heritage and traditions and learning about their communities are able to create songs, dances, or poetry. In fact, some of these youth projects will be performed at our BRAVE Juliana World’s Fair on October 19.
Mentoring USA has entered into a partnership with a new local nonprofit, City at Peace, Inc., the only national performing arts program for youth and social change. This program auditions youth ages 13–19 every September to take part in an entirely youth-produced dramatic production. Some of our mentors and mentees attended the New York premier performances on June 28-30 at The Public Theater, and we hope that this year some of our mentees will be featured in the production! An ancillary benefit is that exposure to the arts helps older youth to contemplate future careers which they may never have considered.
In the past few years, the idea of involving at-risk youth in the arts has been gaining momentum. In 1999, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) partnered with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to use art programs to steer at-risk youth away from crime and delinquency. Many advocates who help at-risk youth believe that the arts give youth a positive outlet for their ideas and talents, so they can create instead of destroy. We consider music and art-based programs as opportunities to offer our young people an understanding of team spirit and a forum to work out their problems without conflict.
The children that we reach through mentoring represent our future leadership. Through the generous support of those in the arts community who care, we introduce them to a larger world where they can become productive, contributing members of our society, rather than adding to the criminal or welfare statistics. By offering them new, exciting alternatives as participants in our BRAVE Juliana program, we make a real difference as we encourage our mentees to use their creative energies for positive social change.
Matilda Raffa Cuomo is Founder and Chairperson, Mentoring USA.
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Guest Editor Matilda Raffa
Cuomo
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Andrew
Cuomo
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Featured Non Profit
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HELP USA is a non profit
organization whose mission is to
help those who are homeless and
others in need become and remain
self-reliant. Through the
development of quality housing with
on-site, comprehensive support
services, including job training and
placement programs, HELP strives to
enable its residents to become
independent and productive citizens.
HELP breaks the cycle of dependency
by addressing its underlying causes
in a way which respects the dignity
of those we serve - by helping them
to help themselves.
Led by Maria Cuomo Cole,
HELP USA is the nation's largest
builder, developer and operator of
transitional housing with
comprehensive , on-site human
services for the homeless serving
more than 10,000 homeless and
low-income individuals each day at
twenty-one facilities throughout the
country - including thirteen
throughout the New York metropolitan
area.
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