I am writing to you from the road, more specifically Williamsburg, Virginia, the birthplace of our country, as I am attending the annual conference of the National Lieutenant Governors Association. I always enjoy the time I have to interact with Lieutenant Governors from other states to share projects and successes we have in our own states, as well learn about things that I can bring to Missouri to make our state an even more wonderful place to live and raise a family.

One thing that I am excited about is the resolution I have sponsored in support of mentoring programs. This week I proposed that other Lieutenant Governors take the success we have with the Missouri Model and build on it in their own states.

The Missouri Model has three important provisions securing state and federal funding for mentoring programs aimed at reaching at-risk youth. More specifically, our program is called Amachi Missouri, brought to me, and run by, the wonderful people at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri. "Amachi" is a word of African origin which means, “Who knows but what God has brought us with this child.”

Amachi Missouri reaches out specifically to those youth who have parents in our correctional facilities. Kids with parents in prison are seven times more likely to end up in prison than those children whose parents aren’t in prison. Big Brothers/Big Sisters and I desperately want to help break this cycle by giving these precious youngsters positive role models to help guide them in shaping their decisions.

In the 2008 fiscal year budget we were successful in helping obtain $400,000 in funding for this program from the Governor and General Assembly to help it continue its important mission.

The second provision involves a program that my office is spearheading called the Missouri Mentor Initiative. The MO Mentor Initiative is a pilot project that provides an opportunity for state employees to spend one hour of their work week volunteering to help mentor children. We should be rolling this program out in the next few weeks and have already received tremendous support from those who want to participate.

The last provision is implementing a systemic relationship between mentoring programs and the corrections system. The systemic relationship has been started with the Department of Corrections adding to the intake process a referral system. As each inmate comes into the system he or she is asked whether they have children and whether they want their children to participate in a mentoring program. To my knowledge Missouri is the only state that has this relationship with a mentoring program and those who run the prisons.

I am proud of what our state has done and continues to do and I am equally grateful that my resolution won unanimous, bipartisan support. Our Mentoring “Trifecta” will now hopefully spread to other states, blooming to help improve the lives of thousands of children nationwide.

A wonderful seed planted right here in Missouri is now about to bear fruit all across America. See what happens when we all work together, reaching across party lines to do what is good and right for the people?

(Ed. Note: This post was originally authored by Peter on July 27, 2007.)