A Smarter, Kinder Maine is targeted to 40 7th – 12th grade students from southern Maine who attend the REAL School. All students have experienced prior school failure with multiple scholastic interventions that have not worked. They continue to fail. All students report Adverse Childhood Experiences, and 80% of the student body is on Free and Reduced School Lunch. Lacking in consistent, positive role models all students are enrolled in Special Education (a Dept. of Ed. technical term) and, therefore, require individual, specialized programming in order to have successes.

In step with Positive Youth Development Theory the need, then, is two fold: 1. Long term, consistent adult mentorship and guidance beyond classroom and therapy; and 2. employable skills. Failure-prone youth need role models beyond that provided by normal parenting; and they need to be able to earn income, that is, to learn a skill that makes them employable. When these needs are met, students experience heightened self esteem and an upward spiral of increased self worth that result in a continued desire to learn, they are able to place trust in adults, and they develop the capacity for permanent well being.

Since simple internships fall far short of these needs, highly trained mentors with mental health training and diagnostic skills will address the issues that swirl around abused youth who have become certified failures through no fault of their own. The goal of the program is to provide employable skills with continued life coaching by trained adult mentors. The objectives are 20 identifiable mentor-mentee relationships by the end of the first year. The REAL School is strengthened by creating a life long positive learning environment, the only solution for very talented young people with life-to-date overwhelming negativity and abuse. Learning knows no end point. As a solid, carefully thought out learning process, A Smarter, Kinder Maine becomes a pilot program home run for others to emulate. By making improvements to the current curriculum, disenfranchised students are given the opportunity to become employable, gain the resiliency to deflect the next abuse (and it will happen), and participate in an upward spiral of well-being. Projects, Inc. is strengthened with the opportunity to apply 43 years of experience in creating another problem solving success through the application of its six, time honored criteria for sustainability. And, finally, by investing in the time to create trust with employable skills the project will expand to create a steady stream of young people with increased capacity to reframe themselves as life long learners and solid members of not only their community, but any community.

REAL School students often find success at the school but then struggle to find fulfilling viable careers after high school. Not surprisingly, when they technically graduate from high school, they drop out of sight lacking positive adult connections. This is our national model, passive abandonment for those not headed to post secondary education. With the introduction of long-term mentors, we anticipate that 80 – 90% of those enrolled in the Smarter, Kinder Maine project will be employed, on a career track and in control of their lives 3 – 5 years after graduation. Their mentors will either be with them or have been replaced with a then current dedicated adult. Though not necessarily a life long relationship, the mentor-mentee relationship is intended to endure for a long time as an integral part of the Smarter, Kinder Maine initiative.

The idea to pay mentors a stipend is imperative. Too often we have experienced the best of intentions lost on legions of volunteers simply because they are not held accountable for their performances. Our mentors are supervised in a 1 -1 relationship as paid employees with the expectation that because they are paid, albeit nominally, the success of their performance must fit a high standard of training and expectations.