Mentoring & Advocacy | FREE Project | Systemic Work
Mentoring Today serves youth who are incarcerated at New Beginnings Youth Development Center by the DC Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS). Our innovative program reaches high-risk, repeat offenders to help combat violent crime and strengthen our community. We provide our mentees with intensive one-on-one mentoring, legal advocacy, and youth leadership opportunities.
If you are interested in becoming a mentor, find out how you can become involved.
If you or someone you know is interested in becoming a mentee, please complete our eligibility quiz.
Mentoring & Advocacy
At our core, Mentoring Today is a re-entry program that provides mentoring and advocacy services to youth while they reside in New Beginnings and throughout their transition back home. To recruit our mentors, we partner with a student organization called Students United at American University’s Washington College of Law (WCL). Mentoring Today’s staff attorneys train and supervise law students, who are members of Students United, to conduct the advocacy and mentoring services that are central to our youths’ success.
Students United is looking for current WCL law students who are interested in serving as mentors! If you are interested in juvenile justice and would like to learn more about becoming a mentor, please take our eligibility quiz.
FREE Youth Empowerment Project
The FREE Project is a youth empowerment project led by a collection of young men who are fighting for greater opportunities for youth in the DC juvenile justice system. FREE stands for Fighting for Rights, Education, and Employment. FREE was started by a group of Mentoring Today’s mentees who were locked up in the past but decided to turn their lives in a positive direction and give back to the community. FREE’s purpose is to create a voice for youth who are or who have been under the supervision of the DC Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS). Through FREE, every youth has the freedom to express his thoughts and to be heard. By uniting young people, FREE aims to improve the juvenile justice system, provide youth opportunities to succeed, and create a stronger and safer community.
Systemic Work
In addition to improving the lives of our mentees, Mentoring Today strives to improve DC’s juvenile justice system as a whole. Through our mentoring and advocacy services, our FREE Project, and our staff attorneys serving as court-appointed juvenile defense attorneys, Mentoring Today strives to identify gaps and shortcomings in DC’s juvenile justice system. We then work with our community partners to address these needs and create a stronger system for all youth in the city.
