Mentoring Offers Hope To At-Risk Kids

Unique Program Helps Keep Children With Incarcerated Parents Off Streets

(CBS)  Last spring, the streets of North Philadelphia were calling Israel Rosario. At 16, Israel was flunking algebra, and as CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports, the only thing stopping him from quitting school altogether was Kenneth Taylor.

Taylor has been Israel's mentor since Israel's father went to prison.

"I want to see him grow up to be something, to do something with his life," Taylor says.

"I'm convinced that a child of incarcerated parents is the most at-risk child in our society," Dr. Wilson Goode says.

Goode is the former mayor of Philadelphia and the founder of a mentoring organization called Amachi. The organization has recruited some 30,000 adults, like Kenneth Taylor, nationwide to mentor the children of people behind bars. Goode says the number of these children is alarming: 7.3 million.

"Some researchers say that if nothing is done, that 70 percent of (those) children will end up in jail themselves," Goode adds.

But to save these kids, Goode has to find them first. So he travels the country asking prisoners to sign up their children.

"I know it works, because it worked for me," Goode tells people he meets. "You see, I'm the son of an incarcerated father."

He tells them the story of how he was mentored when his own father went to jail.

After hearing his story, almost every inmate at Riverside Correctional in Philadelphia signed up a child to be mentored.

In six years, Goode has taken Amachi to 117 cities in 47 states. It's now part of a national campaign to mentor 100,000 children of prisoners by 2010.

Israel says his mentor is "a big part" of him being able to resist the street. "If it wasn't for him, I probably would have been in a corner somewhere selling drugs, shot up or something," Israel says.

Instead, Israel has promised Taylor — and himself — that he'll stay in school. It's not a success story yet, says Taylor, but it is a hopeful one because so far, Israel is still in the game, and has Taylor there reminding him to shoot straight.

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