Expansion and Enhancement of SPARK Mentoring
Ashland County Health and Human ServicesÂ
4/1/2022-6/30/2024
Over the past 3 years, Ashland County has developed and implemented very successful teen mentoring program called SPARK. SPARK served 196 youth from the Ashland School District and the Bad River Ojibwe Reservation in 2021. The program is open to all youth ages 12-18, but primarily serves at-risk youth from Ashland Middle School and High School. This funding will expand the capacity of the SPARK program in several ways: Additional staff capacity to partner with the school district to provide in-school mentoring during the school day; Additional staff capacity to expand programming days and hours. By leveraging the relationships that SPARK staff have built with the district’s students, school behavioral referrals and referrals to law enforcement could be reduced if our mentors were in the schools regularly.