Mission | Vision | Goals | Beginnings
Our Mission
Mentoring Today serves youth both before and after they are released from incarceration to support their successful reintegration into their families and community. Mentoring Today’s advocates and mentors help youth with critical issues such as education, employment, and housing as they enter adulthood. Through these comprehensive, client-centered services, Mentoring Today strives to improve the juvenile justice system and empowers our young people to recognize their dreams and realize their aspirations.
Our Vision
Today the youth in Washington, DC’s juvenile justice system are filled with the courage and brilliance they need to become tomorrow’s leaders. Mentoring Today envisions the moment when they recognize and strive to reach this potential. Today our youth have a resourceful and passionate community that can support them as they endeavor to achieve their dreams. Mentoring Today envisions a city that stands behind each youth and believes in the abilities of all. Today each of us has the opportunity to revolutionize our future.
Our Goals
Mentoring Today’s long-term goal is to reduce the rate at which our mentees return to delinquent, violent, and criminal behavior. Our shorter-term goals are to increase their education and employment levels and to cultivate their leadership skills.
Our Beginnings
Penelope Spain and Whitney Louchheim founded Mentoring Today in February 2005. At that time, both were students at American University’s Washington College of Law and were becoming increasingly troubled by the unmet needs of youth in the DC juvenile justice system. During law school, they worked extensively with youth incarcerated at Oak Hill Youth Center, held internships with the DC Public Defender Service and DC Superior Court, and represented adult and juvenile clients through their law school’s clinical program. These experiences exposed to them the shortcomings of the justice system: defense attorneys and social workers struggled with high caseloads; family members felt disconnected and helpless; and youth rarely felt empowered to articulate what they needed from service providers. These, coupled with the unjust racial disparity of youth placed behind bars, prompted Spain and Louchheim to establish Mentoring Today so that youth could have the dual support of a caring mentor and a zealous advocate.
