Chittenden County Mentoring Program
Will Receive $250,000 In Leahy-Secured Funds

(WEDNESDAY, Sept. 24) – Mobius, the Mentoring Movement, formerly the Chittenden County Mentoring Project, has received $248,144 from the Department of Justice’s Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Program, Sen. Patrick Leahy announced Wednesday.  Leahy secured the funds for Mobius during consideration of the fiscal year 2003 omnibus spending bill.

Mobius is a new organization created by the Champlain Initiative Mentoring Taskforce and the Chittenden County Mentoring Network, which have both worked with the United Way and other mentoring programs to identify the need for additional mentoring programs in Chittenden County.  According to the Taskforce, there are more than 3,000 at-risk children in Chittenden County who could benefit from mentoring programs.  Currently, about two dozen mentoring programs in the county have made 350 mentor-child matches.  Mobius will use the new funds to increase awareness of the benefits of mentoring and to recruit volunteer mentors with a goal of matching more than 550 new mentors with children in the next five years.

"It's all about community involvement,” said Derrick Davis, the president of the Mobius Board of Directors.  “The real beauty of mentoring, which Senator Leahy understands, is that when a caring adult gets involved in the life of a child, it benefits the child, it benefits the adult, and it benefits the community. These funds are a good boost to make this mission a community priority."
 
“Mentoring a child is an incredibly rewarding experience for both the mentor and the child,” said Leahy, a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Department of Justice and its grant and earmark programs.  “Mobius will help at-risk children find new role models who can help keep them off of drugs, in school and out of trouble.”

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