Mesa County Partners

Our mentoring program provides services for 200+ at risk youth, the Restitution/Work Program supervises over 500 youth who are completing their court ordered community service and the Western CO Conservation Corps serves 100+ young people working on public land projects.

More about the programs:

The Mentoring Program focuses on providing trained, screened, and supervised adult volunteers to function as mentors, tutors, and positive role models for youth who are in need of additional support. 

The Mentoring Program has recently expanded to include a School Based Mentoring Program. With this program, Partners is able to provide students with extra support and guidance. Our case manager meets with youth in the school one-on-one to help them develop social-emotional skills, improve their attendance, and develop effective study, communication, and organizational skills. Partners is also able to help provide summer support options like funding for camps, individual and group activities, assistance with summer school, and resource navigation. 

The Restitution/Community Service Work Program started in 1980 at the request of the court system. The Program has been expanded to supervise an average of 900 juvenile offenders annually. The offenders are referred by local law enforcement, District Attorney's Office, Municipal, County and District Courts, the Probation Department and the Division of Youth Corrections. The primary components include: 1. community service work; 2. earning and paying restitution to victims; 3. Victim Empathy classes; and 4.Life Skill classes.

Juveniles are supervised by Partners staff through work crews to perform court ordered community service work and to earn restitution stipends to pay back their victims for damages and losses incurred.  The Partners Work Program is used by the court system to hold offenders accountable, to teach them responsibility for their actions and to give back to the community.  Partners staff members conduct life skills classes and victim empathy classes which enhance the youth's competencies and awareness of the impacts of their behaviors on others.  The Program is designed to hold juveniles accountable for their actions but also help the juveniles learn some new skills and competencies. Many offenders are younger and not able to get a job on their own. The youth would not successfully pay off their victims if the Work Program did not exist. 

The Western Colorado Conservation Corps provides young men and women ages 16-28 with the opportunity to work and learn in an outside setting on and about local conservation projects. WCCC offers a variety of education programs in conjunction with job/career training. Employees of WCCC will be given the tools necessary for the successful completion of high school, have the opportunity to earn their GED, learn about eco-conscious recreation and current conservation issues, and be given the option to earn an AmeriCorps Education Award for higher learning.