This report presents findings on faith organizations’ capacity to provide effective social programming for youth at risk for involvement in crime, with a focus on mentoring programs in low-income communities. The programs, whether a collaboration of faith-based organizations or a partnership between a juvenile justice office and local congregations, successfully tailored the best practices of other mentoring programs to the needs of both mentors and high-risk youth, and their mentors could adapt their relationships with the youth to address specific needs. However, all programs had difficulty recruiting a sufficient number of mentors and maintaining the mentor-youth matches over time. The experiences of the four initiative sites supply lessons to guide other faith-based organizations.
