Breaking the cycle of violence and poverty through mentoring

Eagle Foundation seeks to provide needed services to area children

Editor’s note: This is the sixth in a 10-part series looking at the agencies that were awarded grant funds by the SHARE Foundation as the first partners in the new Violence Intervention Plan. Each installment, which runs on Wednesdays and Sundays through the end of March, looks at a different agency, what was funded by the grant and how it will help address crime and violence in the community.

Looking for ways to complement other area nonprofits and fill in any gaps for servicing the community, the Eagle Foundation is gearing up for its next phase: trained mentoring.

The Eagle Foundation received $35,000 from the SHARE Foundation to develop a new program for high-impact mentoring as part of the new Violence Intervention Plan. The Eagle Foundation will help recruit mentors and provide training, as well as match them with mentees. While the program will start out focused on at-risk children, they hope to expand it to other youth, college-age students, parents and grandparents in the future.

The Violence Intervention Plan focuses on six categories that fall into two areas - community involvement and family support - with each category providing keys to addressing crime and violence in the community. The six categories are: Mentoring & Role Models, Re-Entry, Neighborhood Watches/Clean Neighborhoods, Parenting & Life Skills, Jobs & Targeted Education; and Mental Health, Substance & Drug Abuse.

Jennifer Wylie, founder and president of the Eagle Foundation, said the organization’s goal is to help area children develop into healthy, strong and responsible adults, seeking to break the cycle of poverty, violence and crime that can trap many youths.

“We want to see boys and girls become the men and women that God created them to be,” Wylie said, noting that many organizations and schools share the same goal, and the Eagle Foundation seeks to find the best approach to build a strong and vibrant community.

According to information provided by the Eagle Foundation, 3,200 children under the age of 18, representing 32 percent of households with families in Union County, are estimated to live in impoverished conditions. Of those households, 61 percent have no male parent within the home. When it comes to all households with children under the age of 18 in Union County, 32 percent do not have a male parent in the home.

Justin Geurin, director of united education for the Eagle Foundation, was hired this month to help get the program off the ground. Geurin, an El Dorado native, has a background in education, serving as both a teacher and school administrator, and said he has been excited to take more of a creative approach in supporting the K-12 system.

To start the program, the Eagle Foundation is working with the Boys & Girls Club of El Dorado, which will identify at-risk children in need of mentors within their own programming. Each child identified will have a profile made and sent to the Eagle Foundation, which will then work to match the child with the best mentor for their needs.

While noting that many children who participate in Boys & Girls Club programming are not at-risk, Geurin said partnering with the club is the perfect way to start the mentoring program as it gets mentors connected with children who have been dramatically affected by poverty and trauma.

“We’re learning that when a child experiences some of these traumatic events, violence in the home and things of that nature, it rewires the way their brain functions,” Geurin said. “They process information differently. They process interactions with other people differently … That’s going to have a dramatic impact on what they’re able to do in a classroom from an academic standpoint.”

Geurin and Wylie said the foundation is working to identify the issues facing the community and the children who will participate in the program to structure the mentoring accordingly. The specialized training will focus on providing mentors the tools they need to relate to and positively interact with children from very different backgrounds, Geurin said.

“We want to be very intentional and very specific about how can our training program for mentors give them the tools to have a positive impact in that situation,” Geurin said. “That that kid genuinely feels cared about. Someone values them.”

Wylie emphasized that the Eagle Foundation alters its approach to best fit the needs of the community, and will do the same with the mentoring program, meaning that once the program is in full swing, the foundation will assess its approach and results to decide how best to tackle the next step.

“If we can develop the right programs, the outcome will be immeasurable,” Wylie said. “The mentor training program is just the beginning.”

The SHARE Foundation grant is only for 2018, and Wylie noted that it is the first grant and the first real funding the Eagle Foundation has received. Once the profiles of the children selected for the program are received, the foundation will work to recruit and train mentors. Wylie said the foundation is preparing to mentor more than 100 children through the new program.

And training those mentors is only the first step.

Geurin said the organization is working on its training approach, crafting an entirely new mentor training program from scratch and shaping it to specifically meet the local need. But once the mentors are selected, trained and matched with children (Wylie noted that some mentors could be paired with more than one child, depending on the circumstance), the Eagle Foundation will continue to work with them.

“We want to walk alongside them, through the process, and provide the knowledge, the encouragement, the inspiration, whatever it is that they need so that it is effective,” Wylie said. “Then hopefully we can grow from there and build on it in different ways. This year is just the first step.”

Geurin and Wylie said people shouldn’t be intimidated by the thought of a commitment to a child through mentoring. Geurin said once someone starts spending time with a child, they become addicted to that experience.

“You’d be so amazed at how instantly you connect with these kids,” Geurin said. “They’re just kids. They want to know that they matter.”

Some mentors may only be needed for 30 minutes each week to spend with a child who needs someone to play basketball or help with homework, while other mentors may need to have a larger time commitment, depending on the needs of each child.

Wylie said the Eagle Foundation is still finishing up a newer version of its website and getting everything ready in its offices on Peach Street, but encouraged anyone wanting to help with the new mentoring program to visit Eaglearkansas.org or reach out to Geurin to find out more.

Madeleine Leroux can be reached at 870-862-6611 or at [email protected].

Upcoming Events