Mentoring partnership makes case to chamber members

Local business owners looking to get a jump on this year's crop of teens for summer help got a head start at the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce's First Friday Coffee.

The presentation for the monthly gathering at the Show Me Center was conducted by Dennis Reagan, director of the Missouri Mentoring Partnership, a two-pronged organization that seeks to provide local teenagers and young adults with necessary life and work skills. As part of the presentation, coordinator of the mentoring partnership's worksite program, Margo Block, explained to the area business people how they could receive up to $10,000 in tax credits just for employing one of the youths in her program.

"Hiring a youth for an average of 15 hours a week at minimum wage results in a tax savings of $2,000 for the employer," Block said. In addition, Block said that the employer will receive an employee who's undergone a 15-hour course on job readiness, supportive services from mentoring partnership staff and mentor training.

This is all part of the partnership's worksite program, which is aimed at youths ages 16 to 21 and tries to provide them with basic work skills like appropriate dress, punctuality, problem solving, appropriate workplace behavior and attitude. They do this through regular meetings, classes, on-site job training and partnering the youth with a mentor.

The other sector of the mentoring parnternship services is the parenting program for people under 22 years old who are either pregnant or parenting a baby under 1 year old. The program's coordinator, Stacy Taylor, told the group that her service tries to provide these children and young adults with basic life skills that many take for granted.

"Many of the young mothers in our program have been kicked out by their families because they are angry over the pregnancy," Taylor said. "Others are victims of abusive relationships."

Taylor's program also partners youths with a mentor who helps them learn how to cook, do laundry and budget for the household. The program also offers information on pregnancy, labor and delivery, and newborn care for young mothers.

Reagan said that when the statewide mentoring program was founded in 1993 in St. Louis, it was in response to a growing number of people going through the state's child welfare system without gaining the necessary life skills.

The local Missouri Mentoring Partnership was founded a year later and now covers Cape Girardeau, Scott, Bollinger and Stoddard Counties. The effort is funded through the Southeast Missouri Workforce Investment Board and the Missouri Department of Social Services. The pregnancy program was added in 1999.

trehagen@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137