Empowering Youth Resilience and Promoting Social Emotional Healing Project - The EMPOWERING YOUTH RESILIENCE AND PROMOTING SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL HEALING PROJECT will service targeted youth throughout San Bernardino County, targeting 100 youth between the ages of 10 - 21 to ensure the mental and emotional health of youth through wrap around services and pathways for underserved youth of color to address the impact of Covid-19 and reduce recidivism rates of substance abuse, human trafficking, and domestic violence through mentoring, clinical support, leadership academies, and job training. Empowering Youth Resilience and Promoting Social Emotional Healing project is committed to a culturally competent, continuum of care service model to address the mental and emotional health of children and youth and reduce recidivism rates for youth exposed to violence and substance abuse. Young Visionaries, The LOVE Program and Big Brothers Big Sisters will recruit 100 youth aged ten (10) to twenty-one (21) who are currently or have experienced exposure to trauma, abuse and/or drugs (including opioids and methamphetamine), at risk for abusing drugs, or have family members who are currently abusing or addicted to drugs. Youth focused on and supported by this project have the following struggles: • Poor academic records (as noted by a Grade Point Average of 2.0 or lower) • Negative attitudes in the classroom (as depicted by excessive interruptions, overt inattentiveness, or lack of compliance with instructor) • Extensive disciplinary records (as noted by substance abuse, detentions, number of instances of being removed from class, and suspensions) • Chronic Absenteeism (more than 10 absences per semester), or a record of tardiness (more than 10% of current school session) in any given semester/quarter. Youth served by this project will receive wrap around services from a long-standing history of local service providers offering mentoring, case management, counseling, and academic services supporting. Together assisting over 85,000 at-risk to high-risk youth since inceptions. From three agencies, youth are provided: training, coaching, leadership, mentoring, case management, behavioral health, and substance about counseling 1. The LOVE Program (Living and Overcoming w/Virtue and Excellence). 2. Young Visionary’s African American Student Achievement Program (AASAP). 3. Young Visionary’s R.E.D. (Resilient Empowered Directed) – Mental Health Counseling. 4. Young Visionary’s SAM (Student Achievement Mentoring) Program – Substance abuse and opioid counseling (outpatient) 5. Young Visionary’s the S.M.A.A.R.T. (Successfully Motivating African Americans Through Resilience Training) Program. 6. Big Brother Big Sister of the Inland Empire – one-to-one, volunteer, case managed mentoring focused on inclusion and belonging, socio-emotional health and college and career readiness: a. Community Based Mentoring b. School Based Mentoring c. Bigs with Badges law enforcement mentoring program, d. Workplace Mentoring Program. Each program focuses on helping youth achieve academic success, graduation, career development, and personal manifestation of positive life skills. True equity for youth will be a function of finding innovative solutions to bridging the social capital divide (mentoring), creating psychological safety for receiving mental health services and offering leadership and job skills to strengthen coping skills from substance and/or violence to positive alternatives. As a holistic endeavor which seeks to address several interrelated needs, experts in the fields of mental health, law enforcement, education and workforce training, and local community services, work together in identifying and determining the needs of targeted youth to produce an understanding of the complex network of issues facing at-risk youth by a) Focusing on what each could contribute to the problem of drug addiction, human trafficking, youth offenders and/or prevention of incarceration; b) Engaging police and justice experts; c) Offe
