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The Need for Mentoring in the Bay Area
Final Thoughts

 

Ten-year-old Sammy’s father was shot to death outside their home.  Now Sammy’s mother doesn’t want him out on the street, playing alone.
Sammy’s an active kid – he loves sports, especially basketball – who can’t spend much time outdoors.  He’s a young man whose male role model was just taken away.  He’s a good boy struggling to grow up. 
Seventh-grader Karina gets lost in the shuffle.  Most of her family doesn’t work.  Her father is in jail.  Her mother just had another baby. So did her sister, who’s in the 8th grade. Sometimes it seems like no one’s looking out for her.

So many facets of Bay Area life – crime rates, the employment rate, the cost of social services – depend on whether or not kids like Sammy and Karina can keep from getting lost in the shuffle.

Whether the drop out rates in Oakland or the murder rates in Richmond rise is up to them, not us.

 

What we can do is make sure they know someone is looking out for them.  We can help them in their struggle to grow up by providing role models, access, opportunities and expanded horizons – everything that makes their choices between good and bad decisions meaningful. 

When these children are making decisions and growing up, we can be there.  We can be mentors.

Our future depends on it.

 

Footnotes
  1. Data provided by Education Week
  2. Based on 2000 Census Data compiled by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy
  3. Compiled from the 2005 Census update
  4. The Concentration of Negative Child Outcomes in Low-Income Neighborhoods; Mark Mather and Kerri L. Rivers; The Annie E. Casey Foundation Population Reference Bureau, February 2006
  5. Compiled from the 2005 Census update
  6. Serving Low-income Families in Poverty Neighborhoods; Using Promising Programs and Practices: Building a Foundation for Redesigning Public and Nonprofit Social Services; Bay Area Social Services Coalition
  7. The Environment of Childhood Poverty; American Psychologist; Volume 59(2), February/March 2004, p 77-92
  8. Concentrated Poverty vs. Concentrated Affluence: Effects on Neighborhood Social Environments and Children's Outcomes; Anne R. Pebley and Narayan Sastry; RAND; May, 2003
  9. As rich-poor gap widens in U.S., class mobility stalls; David Wessel; Wall Street Journal, Friday, May 13, 2005
  10. Enduring Poverty and the Conditions of Childhood: Lifecourse and Intergenerational Poverty Transmissions; Caroline Harper, Rachel Marcus, Karen Moore; World Development Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 535–554, 2003
  11. The Intergenerational Transfer of Psychosocial Risk; Mediators, Vulnerability and Resilience; Lisa A. Serbin and Jennifer Karp; Annual Revue of Psychology, 55:333-63, 2004
  12. The Environment of Childhood Poverty; American Psychologist; Volume 59(2), February/March 2004, p 77-92
  13. Ibid
  14. Ibid
  15. Ibid
  16. Ibid
  17. Ibid
  18. Enduring Poverty and the Conditions of Childhood: Lifecourse and Intergenerational Poverty Transmissions; Caroline Harper, Rachel Marcus, Karen Moore; World Development Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 535–554, 2003