With $1.7 million grant, Hickman Mills will mentor students affected by violence
With the help of a $1.7 million grant, the Hickman Mills School District will soon launch a mentoring initiative that will aid students coping with experiencing urban violence, homelessness and other societal ills.
Money from GreenLight Fund Kansas City will pay for separate specialized mentoring programs — Becoming a Man and Working on Womanhood — that will begin next January.
Counselors will serve more than 100 students at Smith-Hale Middle School and Ruskin High School and later expand to eight schools across the metro area by 2025.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said the effort is essential to the growth and development of so many students who live in unpleasant and less than ideal living conditions.
“It is making sure that we have true mentoring activities that tell our young people that not only that we care about them for one week, one month, one activity, one event but through a lifetime,” Lucas said Monday during a news conference at Ruskin High School.
“This investment is one of many in Kansas City that is making sure that this is not just a one-year fix for how we address some of our challenges; it is a multi-year fix, it is a multi-year investment in our young people.”
The GreenLight Fund arrived in Kansas City about 18 months ago and has worked with community leaders, elected officials and educators to identify efforts where it could improve racial and economic disparities in the area.
“We all know that one of those devastating issues impacting our community is violence,” said Sarah Haberberger, executive director of the organization’s Kansas City office. “Too many of our young men and women of color are exposed to traumatic experiences as the result of systemic racism including violence and the grief of loss.”
Haberberger said the group looked at models used in other cities to determine which program would have the most success. It is the group’s first investment in the Kansas City area.
“While community is unique, unfortunately, our challenges are not,” she said. “Our young people need to have the best solutions to address the needs that we know that we have.”
GreenLight is working with another organization called the Youth Guidance and has funded and operated similar programs in Chicago, Boston, Seattle and Los Angeles. The female mentoring effort in Kansas City will be the first time the initiative will be used outside of Chicago.
Students will meet in weekly group and one-on-one sessions with specially trained counselors. The sessions are curriculum based. Funding will provide staffing, training and administrative costs.
Hickman Mills School Superintendent Yaw Obeng said the mentoring effort falls in line with the district’s overall emphasis on student well-being. It is important for students to know and understand that they have a support system that includes teachers, administrators and others in their school environment.
“This explicitly says here is an individual in the building who is going to look after some of your emotional and social needs and connect to your academic success” Obeng said Monday.
This story was originally published September 14, 2020 at 5:51 PM.
