CLERGY COMMUNITY FOR CHILDREN AND YOUTH COALITION
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Mission Statement
The Voice in Shaping Strong Communities MISSION Mentoring and Support Services for Vulnerable Youth of Color VALUES Spiritual Leadership— The core foundation upon which we exist. Clergy support is paramount in providing the necessary grounding and guidance in our much needed daily work. Community Support—They represent everything we strive to influence. Their encouragement and giving allows us to provide the critical Mentoring & Training services required to make the measurable difference … for the present and future! Youth Development—Ensuring long-term life skills growth and independent strength … a tangible investment in our youth’s future. OUR STORY We are a Community based & funded non profit organization Committed to providing the very best mentoring support to Seattle’s vulnerable youth Enabling them to live & work at their highest possible potential.
About This Cause
The 4C Coalition was founded in 1999 to meet the urgent need to provide youth who are at risk of being involved with the juvenile justice system with alternative interventions. Over the years, more than 20,000 youth have participated in our mentoring and trauma-informed care programs. The history of our organization is rooted in education, social services, and the faith community. There is a devastating number of Black youths in need of support from a caring adult. The 4C was born out of a collaboration among mentoring programs, schools, clergy, and government agencies. These sectors came together to build community capacity to recruit, train, and place more mentors, especially Black men and women, to work with youth in need. When well-trained adults help at-risk youth deal with trauma (for example, living in poverty, having an absent parent, being homeless, witnessing violence, etc.), there are many positive outcomes for youth: better academic performance, better mental and physical well-being, and a healthy progression towards building a bright future. The 4C is a research-based mentoring program based on the Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration’s (JRA) mentoring program. 4C recruits, trains, matches mentors to youth, and provides one-on-one and group mentoring. The 4C Coalition starts from a place of healing. We acknowledge the historical as well as the chronic trauma faced by our community, and especially our youth. To get kids back on track, we must address the root causes of their situation: Poverty, broken families, insufficient or poor role models; acceptance of crime, media influence. Youth develop and learning how to deploy the higher-level skills—time management, networking, identification and effective use of resources, and acquisition of financial, social, and cultural capital—needed to achieve academically at school, and later to succeed professionally, thrive physically and psychologically, live a rich, happy, fulfilling life, and achieve financially a level stability for oneself and one’s family. This program is designed specifically for early teens at a critical development point in their lives and focuses on pride for cultural identity and aspirations for a healthy, prosperous future. The program has two parts, led by mentors: Culturally informed content to establish pride in a child’s identity. Our trauma-informed care acknowledges, respects, and integrates the Black community’s cultural values, beliefs, and practices as part of its healing practice. Students are taught about Black history, culture, and achievement in its own right, and not from standard (and deficit-framed) history commonly often found in textbooks and schools. Wellness Mentoring Circles. We have specially trained facilitators who use trauma-informed techniques to help youth heal historical traumas, as well as acute (confrontations) and chronic traumas (the effects of poverty, like hunger and housing insecurity). ✔ Mentoring ✔ Youth Leadership and Engagement Opportunities ✔ Positive Identity Development ✔ Healthy and Safe Relationships Conversations in these circles shift away from away from adult didacticism and toward a youth-centrism that fosters mutual respect, opens lines of communication, and creates deep bonds of care between mentors and youth as well as among peers. The mentoring circles are, in some ways, a utopic microcosm in which they are free to develop new ways of being and interacting. Over time, and with practice, they relate to others in similar ways, perpetuating healthier behavioral loops. All youth participate in group mentoring (research shows that Black youth respond better when working with a mentor and peers at the same time). We also have a new pilot program, where high school students mentor middle school students (more on this below). For students with specific academic or behavioral needs, 4C will arrange for one-on-one mentoring in addition to group mentoring. The one-on-one mentoring sessions target acute issues to get the student back on track. THE RESEARCH There are three significant research studies that have come out to demonstrate that the work we do is important and on the right track: Race and Opportunity Study In a significant population-wide study that followed a generation of people for 30 years, researchers found that when Black and White children grow up in similar economic situations and attend the very same schools, White people get ahead by the time they’re 30, while Black people do not have equal opportunities. There are a number of solutions to this problem; foremost among them is mentoring programs, especially for black youth. See the research and findings.