(Springfield, MA) Roca announced today it was awarded $297,764 by the Bureau of Justice Assistance for The Second Change Act Mentoring Grant. The grant will develop the Roca Springfield Community Mentoring Project (SCMP). Roca’s SCMP will be a partner with the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department and will use a variety of evidence-based practices to enable young offenders to make a positive community reentry.
«We are grateful to the Bureau of Justice Assistance for this grant as it will improve our programs and enhance our intervention model to better serve very high-risk young people,» said Molly Baldwin, Executive Director at Roca. «We are excited about our partnerships with the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department and the regional employment board to help young people and adults reentering change in their lives and succeed.»
The Second Chance Act provides a comprehensive response to the increasing number of people who are released from prison and jail and returning to communities. There are currently over 2.3 million individuals serving time in our federal and state prisons, and millions of people cycling through local jails every year. Ninety-five percent of all prisoners incarcerated today will eventually be released and will return to communities. Roca Springfield will service young adult offenders ages 18-24 being released from the Hampden County House of Corrections. Roca will provide these young people with a combination of two kinds of mentoring – volunteer mentoring with group-based supportive services and more intensive transformational mentoring relationships combined with transitional employment, and job placement and retention services.
Roca’s innovative Intervention Model for Very High Risk Youth uses long-term relationships, education and employment programming, and organizational partnerships to achieve sustainable individual and community change. Since 1988, Roca has helped more than 17,000 disadvantaged and disengaged young people make positive, profound changes in their lives, creating a nationally acclaimed model of Transformational Relationships (TR) as a vehicle for youth development, and pioneering effective local, regional, and national relationships with government, state, religious, health, and community partners. Roca is an outcomes driven organization that helps very high risk young people ages 16 – 24 get out of violence and poverty. The Second Change Act Mentoring grant will continue Roca’s work and provide the support and resources necessary to successfully support offenders’ transition into the community. For more information about Roca visit www.rocainc.org.
