Fresh Futures is a program administered by Jacksonville, Florida-based non-profit Fresh Ministries, and financially supported partly by the Jacksonville Jaguars Foundation. The program involves pairing college-age mentors with middle school aged children from the local community, most of which consists of very urban neighborhoods. Highlights of the program involve Thursday-night tutoring sessions, weekly field trips, where students are taken to community-area events, and one-on-one tutoring sessions conducted by the mentors themselves. There are five mentors currently working in the Spring 2005 program; three currently attend the University of North Florida, and two go to Florida Community College at Jacksonville. All of the mentors have at some time been trained by Kessler Mentoring Connection, a local group which is very active with Jacksonville-area nonprofits. Fresh Futures is notable among mentoring experts for becoming something of a model for similar programs elsewhere in the nation, especially because of its use of innovative grant-writing, publicity channels, and use of networking within the educational community to bring a variety of resources to bear.
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