Children of Incarcerated Parents

4. There was leadership that was able to bridge the faith and secular communities.
Even while they have common goals, the faith and secular partners have
somewhat different perspectives and their own established processes for working
towards goals.Thus, it was essential for Amachi to have a person in a leadership
position who could negotiate between secular organizations and congregations—who
had a commitment to children and to the role that mentoring can
have in their lives, and who understood pastors’ points of view and was a credible
and trusted person in the faith community.
In Philadelphia, Rev.W.Wilson Goode, Sr.—former mayor of the city and
currently Senior Advisor on Faith-Based Initiatives for P/PV and director of the
Amachi project—provided the “bridging leadership.” His role was obviously
important for such crucial tasks as recruiting pastors for the project, as well as,
on a larger level, trying to ensure that the partners understood one another’s
institutional language. His leadership was also essential for working through the
roadblock that occurred when hundreds of volunteers and children had been
recruited before the capacity was fully in place to screen the volunteers, interview
the children, and make the mentor-child matches. Given the fact that
Amachi was a new project and that it took off with unexpected speed, this situation
was not necessarily surprising, but that fact did not make it any less of a
problem. Congregations and their volunteers were poised to move forward,
while the mentoring organization was scrambling to catch up. It required ongoing
communication and negotiation from Amachi leadership to make sure that
everyone was able to ultimately arrive together on common ground.
5. A firm system of accountability was a central component of success.
While Amachi built in a strong system of support for mentors, it also
demanded accountability. A mentor and child have to meet regularly if there
are going to be benefits for the mentee, and thus, the project collected data
each month on how often, and for how many hours, every volunteer met with
her or his mentee, what activities they did together, and how often they spoke
on the telephone.
The data were collected by the CVCs at each church; and Amachi then used
the information to generate reports that provided immediate feedback to pastors
on how their mentors were performing.This data collection and feedback system
was key for keeping pastors involved and motivated, and for keeping churches
accountable for ensuring that their mentors were meeting with the children.
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AMACHI