New B’ginnings Mentoring foundation is a small organization that takes great pride in working with at risk youth & 1st time offenders. Having a chance to observe many disadvantages youth are faced with today, saddens many of us here within our community. Thinking rationally one would believe as a nation we’re steadily rising in this 21st century, but actually many of our youth are truly falling.
The facts clearly reflect that many of our kids will drop-out of school because no one simply took the time to tell them to stay in, and several find themselves caught up on drugs or in some other trouble before ever growing up. Once a youth becomes familiar with this vicious cycle it tends to follow them continuously and many times ending tragically. It’s nothing like the 60’s when percentages of households with 2 parents averaged high in the 80% range. Today averages are much lower somewhere in the 30% range. Today 38% of kids grow up without fathers. Statistics clearly illustrate that many of these kids grow up without any love or guidance from a father, 28% white, 50% Hispanic and 71% black.
NEARLY 1,500,000 YOUTH HAVE PARENTS INCARCERATED
Nearly 1,500,000 youth under the age of 18 have a parent in a federal or state prison. These are the true facts facing our society today. These figures have increased some 60% over the last decade. This is so incredible and very difficult to believe.
More than 80% of all inmate parents reported having a kid now living with the kid's other parent; about 20% stated that the grandparents or other kin were caring for a child of theirs and 2% had a kid in a foster care or institutionalized. This overall total exceeds 100% because some inmates had more than one kid, with different custodians.
Male inmate parents—90% of them in state facilities and 92% of federal prisoners were more likely to report a kid living with the other parent. Only 28% of female state prisoners and 31% of female federal prisoners reported a kid living in the care of the youth's father. With these types of factors clearly facing our society how are we to look forward towards or expect any sort of change in the near future?
Question: Who are our kids likely to turn to for leadership and guidance?
Reports indicate that there are actually some 20,000 - 30,000 gangs here in this country, with 800,000 - 1 million members or more. In the State of Maryland there are supposedly some 350 gangs with a reported 7750 members. In Baltimore City nearly 500 students are identified as gang members. With the state of the economy steadily decreasing and youth oriented establishments continously vanishing, chances are things are likely to worsen before they get better. What happened to our neighborhood recreation centers and places like the PAL (Police Athletic League) centers. It's obviously clear that the system hasn't acknowledged the benefits of these useful programs. They were awesome in several of the neigborhoods because it provided as a viable extracurricular resource for many of our youth to utilize daily. Many youth from single parented families had a positive place to frequent after school which kept many of them from getting into mischief. Budget cuts in this area can be crucial, who really benefits under these circumstances? Have we ever thought about budget cutting one of the juvenile institutions?
As a result of these continuous problems many youth are finding out that they never really had a fair chance to succeed. That’s why a few good men are stepping up and reaching back today. New B’ginnings has a purpose and we know that youth deserve a chance but must have strong leadership and guidance to get it. We are compelled to qualitatively mentoring these kids in effort to teach them fundamentals about life what they should know in effort to become reliable and responsible men. We have a variety of components implemented within our curriculum that will help to reinforce leadership, guidance, communications, building relationships, etc. We also have a dynamic and unique staff of professional individuals with an abundance of information, life skills and hard won experience.
At this present we are very limited with our resources, however we are still managing to mentor youth in the Baltimore, Maryland community. We are supporting other mentoring organizations in effort to represent as part of the solution working towards an obtainable goal. We are also currently seeking a temporary facility to house our program until we can generate enough funds for a permanent place of business.
I’m sure that you can agree that there are problems within our society of how at risk youth and 1st time offenders are limited with resources and should have more leadership and guidance.
What You Can Do about It
With taking this approach of striving towards our plight we’re challenged with considerable cost and expenses. One way that you can help us to do this is by making a special gift to New B’ginnings this year. These donations will be used to help fund equipment, supplies, cultural educational events, transportation expenses and a portion of administrative cost.
At New B'ginnings we're committed towards providing qualitative services to help enhance our youth, our community and overall living environment. If you have any information or ideas that you feel may help us to come closer to our goals, please feel free to forward this information to
Radio Personality "Micheal Baisden" has implemented a dynamic program for mentoring at:
www.minglecity.com/forum/showthread.php?p=112942 - 58k
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Mail To: New Bginnings Mentoring Foundation. 5 Bel Air South Pkwy Suite 109-103 Bel Air, Md. 21015
Here are a couple of informative links that will help to provide more information on gang awareness concerning our youth.