MENTORING: WORKERS, NOT WELFARE

The Missouri Mentoring Partnership is in the business of creating taxpayers.

The MMP staff works with young adults from 16 to 22 years of age who are at risk of becoming welfare recipients as adults. Staff members and mentors give our youths the support, guidance and Tender Loving Care so often absent in their lives. We enable them to become self-sufficient adults and contributing members of society.

MMP's Worksite Program puts youths through an intensive job-readiness training course designed to close the gaps in their concepts of what it takes to succeed in the world of work. They cannot miss class, and they cannot be late. Upon successful completion, we help them find a job and then enter an even more critical phase of the process: helping them keep the job. The partnering employer, who pays the youths' full salary, identifies a workplace mentor to guide the youth inside the business.

Another part of MMP is the Parenting Program, which recruits volunteer mentors from the community to serve as life-skills mentors for pregnant and parenting youths between puberty and 22 years of age. Completion of Parenting Readiness classes is required of the moms-to-be. The classes are often attended by the dads too. In addition to monthly support group meetings, which include education and socialization, each young woman spends another four hours a month with her mentor pursuing activities of the pair's choice. One year and seven months into this program, not one of our young women has experienced a repeat pregnancy, which is one of the objectives.

And the youths bloom. As they successfully complete each phase of the program, a sense of achievement new to many of them heightens self-esteem and confidence. Mentors and staff members praise, shore up, prod, offer constructive criticism and provide earned rewards to bolster our fledgling achievers.

Obviously, this program costs money, which is allocated by the Missouri Department of Social Services. Study after study has proven that prevention programs are less costly to society than prisons. Youths who are working and going to school another important emphasis of our program have far less time or inclination to get into trouble. Their heightened self-esteem makes it easier for them to say no to negative influences.

We serve about 150 kids a year in Cape Girardeau and Scott counties with a staff of five on a budget of $252,700. The St. Louis MMP site serves about the same number with twice the staff. Beyond modest salaries, stationery and supplies, the money goes to help the youths become self-sufficient. It could be spent for a baby bed where there would otherwise be none, a haircut that is acceptable to prospective employers, work boots, tools, ACT test fees for college entrance, clothing for a job interview or day-care enrollment charges so Mom can go back to work.

Gov. Bob Holden has recommended a 65 percent reduction in the state MMP budget for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1. Unless we are successful in receiving grant and donation support, we will not be able to operate at the current capacity or quality. The local MMP team has already voluntarily absorbed the responsibilities of a clerical position in this current fiscal year to be able to maintain top-quality service to the maximum number of young people.

In our two counties, the Missouri Mentoring Partnership:

* Partners with 148 much-appreciated businesses and organizations as employers.

* Provides Youth Opportunity Program tax credits to our employers.

* Enlists the invaluable expertise of 87 workplace mentors identified by the employers and 23 community volunteer parenting mentors, all trained.

Currently, 24 of the 55 youths employed through MMP are in career-track positions.

In the last two years, 122 of our youths have successfully surpassed the state's definition of success: at least 90 days on the job.

To date, $146,612.17 in youth wages paid in 2000 from 21 of our employers has been submitted for YOP tax credits. With 50-plus youths working simultaneously, it is obvious MMP youths are earning about as much each year as our budget allocation.

Considering that the majority of these youths could not have obtained their first jobs or the quality of jobs they now hold without MMP support, this appears to be a good buy for taxpayers.

Marge Sullivan of Cape Girardeau is the director of Missouri Mentoring Partnership.