Project Restore Minnesota offers culturally specific programming for youth residents at the Juvenile Detention Center. Specifically, we provide a learning environment that centers on personal development, culture, critical thinking, conflict resolution, and building interpersonal skills. Workshops are provided via zoom every Saturday afternoon, rotating pods every week.

The Saturday sessions allow young people to interact with the Project Restore support team, learn from PowerPoint presentations, and engage in intentional thought-provoking dialogues. Additionally, we work through the curriculum co-created by Lewis McCaleb, one of our lead workshop facilitators. The Deconstruction Zone™ is a culturally based personal development system designed to lead us to a more permanent state of Self-Worth 2.0.

Deconstruction Zone explores our cultures, histories, and identities, where we examine the stories told about ourselves and the narratives we’ve believed about ourselves. We turn the concept of Social Determinants of Health on its head and upside down by bringing out the talent in each person, increasing self-awareness, and participating in a unique process of unlearning created to help us develop a new narrative along the way.

What youth get from the Deconstruction zone: Deconstruction Zone is a personal and business development system, written as a mind maze and heart obstacle course, designed to:

1) Explore our histories

2) Become aware of the people, places, and things we plug into and hook up to

3) Unravel our own, often tricky webs

4) Learn the benefits of minding our own business - and reconsider what our own business could be and is.

5) Achieve our own goals and dreams.

On Sundays, youth residents in the JDC facility have the opportunity to have one-on-one mentoring sessions with Vincent Kilgore, our peer mentor. During these sessions, youth can connect with Vincent to discuss issues they have in the facility and the community, develop personal empowerment plans to set goals for the resident and establish trusted relationships with the young person. We seek to connect youth with meaningful resources and wrap-around support while in the JDC facility and to expand those connections as they depart the JDC. To accomplish this mission, we must build strong relationships with the young people in the JDC to ensure they connect with our team when they depart the facility. As such, we spend a significant amount of the time on Sunday getting to know the residents, building trust, discussing pertinent issues they have, and learning how to best advocate for the child. Mentoring will occur at least once per week, with the flexibility to have more based on the need. Residents will receive mentoring services through one-on-one sessions and some group sessions as allowed.

Once residents leave the JDC, they can connect with Elijah to continue their mentoring and wrap-around support. Lastly, we work with the young-persons Probation Officer and serve as a liaison for the youth and Probation Officer. In this capacity, we can advocate for the young person while completing the terms of their probation, provide wrap-around support, and assist the probation officers with staffing and other needs as they arise.

Project Restore Minnesota offers tutoring services during the weekday for the residents attending the Downtown School. We have two tutors, Tam and Angela, both experienced with tutoring young adults in the areas of Science, English, History, and Math. We provide tutoring services individually with the tutor and the resident. Residents can choose to work on specific topics, complete homework assignments, or work on material prepared by the tutor. Residents have access to tutoring services twice a week for 2 hours each, and we hope to expand those services.