Operation Progress Mentor Program Launched!

Operation Progress has recently formed an alliance with local private schools in the South East Los Angeles/Watts and Harbor areas of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Our mission, as an organization, is to identify, improve and invest in the potential of students. We have decided to begin with a mentoring program that reaches out to the youth early in their educational development and work to tap into their potential.

Using the Path4Teens™ curriculum, Operation Progress provides the students with an interactive and practical foundation for developing a set of life skills that promotes healthy decision making, and help to focus the students like a laser as they develop a mission and vision for their life and college career.

We feel that engaging our students at a younger age allows us to provide more tools for self-discipline, personal and leadership development. We will also require the parents to be a responsible part of helping us help their children succeed. They will be required to become a part of community through volunteer projects along with their child. This engagement will get the two generations working together and will allow them to become more aware of the needs of their local community.

In January 2011, seven students from seven different families from the LA/Watts area were selected for our program and will be attending St. Lawrence School. St. Lawrence and Operation Progress have become financial partners sharing the burden of tuition to provide these opportunities to the students, and seven different officers from their neighborhoods have volunteered to mentor the students and build a relationship with their families.

In 2010, three students from the same family were provide the same opportunity and will be attending Holy Trinity in San Pedro, CA and will be mentored by Officer Jim Biazavich of LAPD Harbor Division in California.

A reserve officer and chaplain of the Los Angeles Police Department has coordinated these partnerships and is working to get more students into the program in the next 5 years.

The goal is to get twenty students a year accepted into a private or charter school in their neighborhoods with a goal of forty students a year by 2016. Corporate financing is currently being sought to adopt/sponsor a student which will allow each student to attend ShareFest's amazing Summer Youth Development Academy “YDA” held at Cal State University Dominguez Hills each summer.

For more information about our program or to sponsor a student for YDA please contact us.