Black Males: What We Gonna Do With Them?

50 BEST HOME-BASED BUSINESSES WEBINAR PROMO.wmv

2010-12-17T01:59:00.000-08:00

Black Males: What We Gonna Do With Them?: BLACK MALES: What We Gonna Do With Them?

2010-11-27T06:53:00.000-08:00

Black Males: What We Gonna Do With Them?: BLACK MALES: What We Gonna Do With Them?: "The Statistics are Bad and Getting Worse Nearly 650,000 adults are released from America’s prisons each year. They return to their commun..."

BLACK MALES: What We Gonna Do With Them?

2010-11-27T06:39:00.000-08:00

The Statistics are Bad and Getting Worse

Nearly 650,000 adults are released from America’s prisons each year. They return to their communities needing housing and jobs, but their prospects are generally bleak. The majority of returning prisoners have not completed high school. Close to three quarters of them have a history of substance abuse, and more than one third have a physical or mental disability. These former prisoners are going home to some of the nation’s poorest neighborhoods, where they often lack stable social bonds and where there are few supports and services to help them restart their lives.

Given the huge gap between their complex challenges and their limited opportunities for addressing them, it is not surprising that recidivism rates are high. In fact, more than half (52 percent) of former state prisoners are back behind bars within three years after their release, either as a result of a parole violation or because they have committed a new crime.
This cycle of recidivism has layers of negative consequences. Households that are already fragile become overwhelmed. Communities that are already struggling fall further behind. And the lives of those who move in and out of prison are wasted. The cost to taxpayers is enormous. Overall, the US spends more than $60 billion a year on prisons and jails. (It costs more than $23,000 to incarcerate someone in a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility for one year and approximately $3,500 per year for probation; incarceration in a state prison can run as high as $45,000 per year.)

Without the development of effective approaches for reducing recidivism, the problem is certain to grow. The number of Americans behind bars has increased steadily and now includes more than 2.3 million men and women. Almost all of them will eventually be released—and unless something changes, more than half will not be successful in reentering their communities and will return to prison.

Why Include Mentoring in a Reentry Program for Adults?
For more than 10 years, research has demonstrated that carefully structured,well-run mentoring programs can positively affect social, behavioral and academic outcomes for at-risk young people. Research has also shown how mentoring works—through the development of a trusting relationship between the young person and an adult mentor who provides consistent, nonjudgmental support and guidance.

Among the questions to explore was whether mentoring could similarly lead to positive outcomes for adult ex-prisoners. Findings from the evaluations suggest that mentoring may have real benefits in strengthening outcomes in the context of a multifaceted reentry program. Across the many program sites, about half of the participants became involved in mentoring. Those participants fared better, in terms of program retention and
employment, than those who were not mentored. Specifically:

They remained in programs that help them
They were more likely to find a job while in the program.
They were more successful in retaining jobs.
They were less likely to recidivate.

See more on this subject on my next Blog on December 1, 2010. Go to http://www.faithinstitute.org/ and click on our ONLINE store for Mentoring Former Prisoners: A Guide for Reentry Programs Manual.

How to Help At-risk Males to Help Themselves

2010-11-24T22:19:00.000-08:00

The Rites of Passage for Males Life Skills

Training Curriculum

The Rites of Passage for Males Life-skills Training Workshop is a ten week intensive workshop that will give at-risk young men and boys the tools that they needs to succeed in life and to become self-sufficient. This workshop will focus on building critical thinking skills for males to help them to make good life choices.

The Rites of Passage for Males Life-skills Training Workshop seeks to diminish anxieties about formal academic training and helps to introduce at-risk males to an appropriate and individualized educational experience.

The ten week curriculum for the workshop is:

INTRODUCTION & BASIC LIFE-SKILLS

Key Learning Objective

The Basic Life-Skills segment was developed to help convince the trainee that he can be both capable and successful in his life. This workshop teaches the trainee on how to develop future goals, objectives and strategies that will lead to a livable income.

Week One - Getting to Know You – The trainer will familiarize himself/herself with the trainee by asking opened end questions. Start with individual introductions of each trainee with emphasis on expected benefits and gains from the workshop (45 minutes).

Week Two – Basic Life Skills – The trainer will cover Chapter I of The Rites of Passage for Manual – Taking Care of Myself thru Committing to Change (45 minutes).

Week Three – Basic Life Skills – The trainer will cover Chapter I of The Rites of Passage for Manual – Getting involved with the wrong People thru Procrastinating (45 minutes).

Week Four – Basic Life Skills – The trainer will cover Chapter I of The Rites of Passage for Manual – Getting Angry and Making Things Worse thru Don’t Treat Me like a Child.

Week Five – Basic Life Skills – The trainer will cover Chapter I of The Rites of Passage for Manual – Wanting What Others Have thru Why We Quit Too Soon. Test on Chapter 1 (45 minutes).

Who We Are

Faith Institute of Entrepreneurship, Inc. is a non-profit school of entrepreneurship, vocational and computer literacy training that provides vocational, retail, wholesale distribution and private label manufacturing training for at-risk youth and adults who desire to start and run their own business. A community-base training institute of life-skills, self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship training called “Faith Institute of Entrepreneurship” (FIE) will be established at two locations: in Wilmington, North Carolina and a branch in Goldsboro, North Carolina. The school curriculum will include vocational, manufacturing, wholesale, retail and distribution entrepreneurship training.

The institute will provide a work-study program for attendees, where attendees will be paid to attend school and to work in the schools call center, retail store, manufacturing facility and distribution facility. The work study program will encourage entrepreneurship training in the attendees chosen field of study (vocational, retail. wholesale. distribution or manufacturing), while providing the attendee with income during the two-year training period.

This training institution will also provide a two-year self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship training curriculum that will enable at-risk youth to think “making-a-jobs “versus “getting-a-job”. The schools targeted population is jail to community transitional youth, high school dropouts, at-risk youth involved with the juvenile justice system and other youth between the age of 17 and 25 years of age.

Faith Institute of Entrepreneurship, Inc. (FIE) was founder in March, 2003 to provide a self-sufficiency training program and curriculum to teach entrepreneurship (the mindset of owning a business) to at-risk youth and adults. This mindset of self-sufficiency will enable youth and adults to think “making-a-job” vs. “getting-a-job”.

Our training workshops are designed to train-the-trainers to teach young men and women life skills, self sufficiency and self-esteem enhancement skills, and to help you to start and fund your own professional training organization. Our workshops can be held in your facility. Please contact us for a date and time for each workshop.

Our workshop trainer for “The Rites of Passage for Males”, the “Create Your Own Job!” and A “Practical Guide to Grant Writing & Fundraising” Workshops is D. Harold Greene, the Executive Director of Faith Institute of Entrepreneurship, Inc, and the author of the nationally published “The Rites of Passage for Males Manual” (Hamilton Books, 2008). He is also the author and publisher of the “Create Your Own Job! Manual“(Faith Publishing, 2008) and “A Practical Guide to Grant Writing & Fund Raising Manual“(Faith Publishing, 2008).

He is a former continuing education faculty member at three Maryland junior colleges, and an entrepreneurship, career and life skill training consultant.