Mentoring Positives, an East Side organization that mentors vulnerable youth to become productive members of their community, is one of nine community organizations that has been selected for grants, totaling $3.5 million, from the Wisconsin Partnership Program at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, through its Community Impact Grant Program.
“We’re honored and thrilled that Mentoring Positives has been awarded this funding. This grant is going to have a deeper lens of research around it and the metrics of moving the needle on how we are working with kids,” Will Green, the executive director of Mentoring Positives Inc., tells Madison365. Mentoring Positives received a Level 1 Engage award designed for small to medium-sized organizations and will be provided up to $250,000 over three years. “With this Wisconsin Partnership Program grant, we are going to be working more closely with that organization, and they’re going to provide support to us so that we can better evaluate the program better.”
The Wisconsin Partnership Program is a grantmaking program at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health committed to improving health and advancing health equity through investments in community partnerships, education and research. Since it began making grants in 2004, the Wisconsin Partnership Program has awarded more than $300 million for more than 635 projects.
Green says that this current support will empower Mentoring Positives to continue building strong, trusting relationships with youth and creating positive change through mentoring, athletics, and social entrepreneurship. Money from the grant will help their initiative called The Positive Path in the Darbo/Worthington Neighborhood as they look to provide each child a positive path through a progression of development that they call their “White, Red, and Black Zones.”
(Photo by Hedi Lamar Photography)
“The White Zone is our introductory space where kids coming in can get some basketball, they get some mentoring,” Green explains. “Then we move into that Red Zone once they’ve shown some development and competencies in their leadership skills and have achieved certain benchmarks. Soon they will be touching base with culinary skills and we have financial literacy with Bob Wynn. We do two-fold marketing and up-next marketing.”
Youth enter the Black Zone when they have displayed advanced leadership skills and they achieve formal part-time employment.
“We just try to get the kids touch points and career paths once they get to that Black Zone. But it’s really that positive path going through the White, Red, and Black Zones, and that’s how we track the kids,” Green says. “That’s how we have a better coordination of the kids coming through the program.”
Founded in 2004, Mentoring Positives just celebrated its 20th anniversary with a special event at the Goodman Community Center’s Brassworks last fall.
“We’re still a small nonprofit, although we’ve been here 20 years, and we’re still looking for that significant funding that really can put us over the top, so I can really start to design programming in a way, and not always be thinking about resources and paying staff,” Green says. “So although this grant is significant for us, we are still in need of more funds to do the work that we need to do as we grow.
“There’s so many things going on in our community right now but we do a job keeping our head to the grindstone and keep working for these kids. We stay in our lane and Mentoring Positives continues to grow,” he adds. “A grant like this is so important to us.”
This Community Impact Grant Program provides two levels of grant funding designed to support community partnership initiatives that address the social determinants of health to improve health and advance health equity in Wisconsin’s rural, urban and tribal communities. Grant recipients undergo a competitive and rigorous application and review process.
“We are thankful for the Wisconsin Partnership Program for believing in our mission and investing in a brighter future for our community,” Green says.
“After all of these years I still enjoy working with these kids and empowering our community,” Green adds, “and that is what it is all about.”