decarceration mentoring program

We have reached consensus about an essential fact: our youth are in crisis! Facing a failed educational system, defunct communal support, and wilting prospects of economic empowerment, we encounter a generation of young people who will have to grow in an environment caustic and perverse to their natural tendencies. They face a situation unlike the young people of the past. They are wildly over- criminalized, habituated to situations of violence, and condemned as unredeemable based upon their behaviors and choices. They are spoken for and to, preached at and about, and promised great and uplifting change that never comes. We have reached a point in our plight where our steps to remedy the great ills caused by oppression are to take matters into our own hands – to form the very necessary village which will provide a basis for the growth and development of our newest humans.

The Zakatu Madrasa is highly invested in developing youth and adults who are engaged at a high-level in personal development work that allows them to live in a spirit-centered culture consistent with the natural ethos of people of color.  To that end, the Decarceration Mentoring program has as its goal the great hope of uniting young people and adults in mutual discovery and development. The Mentoring relationship is a one-to-one arrangement of trust which brings together Court-involved youth referred through the Saint Louis City Family Court with Deans of the Zakatu Madrasa. Deans are expected to use the skills, training, views, values, and perspectives offered by the Madrasa to create enriching and reciprocal relationships with their Mentees. Yet they are not alone – an entire village does not live by the wisdom of one elder – our goal is a collective endeavor , one that seeks to transcend the ordinary norms of mentoring and establish, in their place, a space for liberation and community.

outcomes

Our goal is transformation and connection. Participating youth should experience significant changes in behavior, with target outcomes inclusive of the bulleted list below:

• better coping strategies to deal with stress/trauma/anger and its various sources
• increased acceptance of and respect for guidance from adult/authority figures

• widening social support net as a result of introduction to various community members

• newfound interest in extra-curricular activities outside his/her neighborhood

• more awareness about resources available to them

• formation of relationships based upon growth and positive interests

  We hope that youth come into contact with new information about their culture, identity, and place in the world through regular interaction with their Mentor. We also strive to incorporate, as much as appropriate, youth into existing Madrasa activities and functions to show them a communal home that can outlast the specifics of their Mentoring relationship.

In 2017 alone, the mentoring program had 35 mentee referrals, working with 7 trained mentors , to achieve 18 successful placements. The mentoring program began with only 6 mentors, and expanded due to excessive demand to 14 by early 2018, more than doubling the number of Deans who received mentor training.