Youth Mentoring Program
Children learn and help each other…
…to live drug-free, healthy lives, stay in school – and look to the future – no matter what challenges they face today.
Health People’s award-winning Kids-Helping-Kids Mentoring Program, funded by foundations and private donations, is a year-round program designed to help children as young as 5 and as old as 20 understand how to cope successfully with their parents’ illnesses or absences from the home. The program trains and connects teen mentors, who have overcome the death, illness or absence of parents due to HIV/AIDS, substance use disorder (including opioid dependence) or other chronic illnesses, to other youth who are experiencing similar problems of their own.
Mentoring Works
and is Cost Effective!
$120,000
The cost of keeping a young person incarcerated for a year.
$1,000
The cost to provide a mentor for a child for a year.
Children learn and help each other to live drug-free, healthy lives, stay in school – and look to the future – no matter what challenges they face today. Mentors are paired with mentees for group and individual recreational and educational activities, skill sharing and problem solving workshops, personal development and goal setting seminars, and job readiness exercises. Youth are linked to medical, mental health, and substance use disorder treatment and care services. In a city with a 50% school dropout rate, Health People’s Kids-Helping-Kids Mentoring Program has virtual no drop-outs — just kids headed toward careers and a sense of their own possibilities.
Health People's Kids-Helping-Kids Mentoring Program provides
- Training for teens to become mentors
- Weekly teen-facilitated support groups for all ages
- Daily summer mentoring program
- Supervised recreational and cultural field trips and family events
- Reading program, homework help and youth wellness activities
- Linkage to medical, mental health, and SUD treatment and care services
For more information about how to join the program, or to
become a program sponsor, contact Dr. Anthony Salandy at 718-585-8585 ext 212.
Achievements and Awards
Health People’s Mentoring Program was named 1 of 16 Model Mentoring Programs by the National Mentoring Partnership. Why? Because it works.
Outside evaluation under the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development shows that teens in our mentoring program are significantly less attracted to drugs than other adolescents living in similar difficult circumstances and that they stay in school.
Upcoming Events:
“After I lost my parents, I thought my life was over. But then I joined the mentoring program. After a couple of years they asked me to be a mentor, and I realized that I can make a big difference in the lives of other kids who think they’ve lost everything. That means a lot to me.”
Tariq Carr, Health People Kids-Helping-Kids Mentor“When I enrolled my son in Health People’s mentoring program, I was having problems of my own as a single parent in drug recovery, and he was really floundering. Now, he’s in a charter school at the top of his class. And I’m doing great, too, as a Health People Peer Educator.”
Chevelle Wilson, Health People Peer whose son is in the Kids-Helping-Kids Program