CNCS State Offices Form Statewide Amachi Programs

As part of its Strategic Plan, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) plans to leverage four million community volunteers who are recruited and managed within Corporation-sponsored national service programs by 2010. By that same year, they also hope to provide mentoring and other support services to 100,000 children of prisoners. CNCS programs are working toward attaining these goals by starting mentoring children of prisoner (MCP) programs, as well as partnering with existing ones.

Some State Offices have taken the goal a step further and are organizing statewide mentoring children of prisoner (MCP) programs. This strategy makes the most sense for North Dakota and South Dakota, according to Deb Schiefelbein, pProgram sSpecialist for CNCS, North & South Dakota State Office. “If a mother is in the Pierre Prison, the child might be 200 miles away in Aberdeen,” she says Schiefelbein. “I knew then that we had to get the whole state involved or they couldn’t do their job and be successful at mentoring those children, or if we didn’t have cooperation and collaboration between RSVP’s (Retired Senior Volunteer Persons) and FGP’s (Foster Grandparents) in the state.”

The goal is to have a cadre of FGP, RSVP, college- student, and/or Big Brothers Big Sisters partners across the state available to mentor the children of incarcerated parents no matter where they reside. To help ensure the success of the program, Schiefelbein worked with the Amachi Training Institute to organize a cross- state training in June 2006. “I wanted buy-in from all the project directors,” she says. “It’s important for us to give them the training that they need to do their job.”

Schiefelbein needed the project directors from RSVP, FGP, AmeriCorps, and AmeriCorps*VISTA to be trained simultaneously. The Amachi model allows for each of these CNCS streams of service to be incorporated. “That’s the key ingredient to having [the program] be successful in our two states, is that [to have the CNCS streams of service] do [their] work together,” she says. “We are sparsely populated and we do not have a lot of [Corporation] resources.”

Tom Harmon from the Virginia State Office has experienced similar financial difficulties, but is still finding a way to implement the statewide Amachi program. In July 2005 Harmon organized a state-wide training with the Amachi Training Institute. Since that time, the program has utilized the services of many of the CNCS streams. For instance, in the Virginia Amachi program, AmeriCorps*VISTAs coordinate resources, mobilize volunteers, help with training, and work with jails. FGPs mentor children, and RSVPs mentor and help market the program.

Creating a state-wide MCP mentoring children of prisoner model takes anywhere from a year to a year and a half, according to Harmon. “It just depends upon the amount of resources that you have to direct to it,” says Harmon. “If you have a lot, you can move it fast once you’ve done the foundation work. If you don’t, then you have to bring it in based upon your availability to fund the activities yourself.”

Fall 2006