The Petroleum Valley Ministerium is excited about a new program in the works: the Karns City Area Mentoring Program.

The program is designed as a referral option for high school guidance counselors and families concerned about their struggling children.

"We're not talking about tutoring," said the Reverend James Higgins of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Chicora. "(It's) being an adult role model to the kids, (providing) a positive adult role model."

The program was born out of a request for help from the counselors and teachers at Karns City High School.

"Teachers on the core team came to us and said, 'We need some help,'" Higgins said.

After much prayer, the ministerium determined the request was God's vision. They have been working on the details for more than a year and are pleased to see their efforts are about to come to fruition.

"Working with Family Guidance, we put this together," Higgins said.

Family guidance is a church-based mentoring program in Sewickley.

The program will work by matching identified teens with trained adult Christians. Any teen suffering from academic, social or emotional problems would be a possible candidate for the program.

Ideally, recommendations for students in grades seven through 12 to be part of the program could come from the school or the parents. The court system could also suggest caseworkers and families consider the program as one alternative to early intervention.

The teens who join the program would then be paired up with trained mentors of the same sex and would meet weekly for at least a year.

The hope is that the mentors will become a sounding board for the teens and ultimately share a Christian perspective on concerns the teens have. The program would not consist of counseling, but as tool to let the teens know that there are people who care about them.

The Rev. Randall Forester of St. Paul's United Church of Christ in Chicora is one of the ministerium members assisting with starting the project. He is impressed with how smoothly the program has fallen into place.

"We're looking at making 20 partnerships," he said. "The cost is minimal. The benefit could be infinite."

However optimistic the members of the ministerium may be, there are several points that must be settled before the program can be successfully started.

First and foremost is to come up with financing to hire an area coordinator, the person who would be the "mentor to the mentors."

Other concerns are finding a place to house the program and people willing to be trained and to serve as mentors.

The five-hour training session would focus on

communication, mentoring dos and don'ts and getting kids to talk.

"Our goal is to get it up and running right after the first of the year," Higgins said, "(but) we need people, we need money, we need prayers."

For information, or to make a donation to the Ministerium's Mentoring Program, contact the Rev. James Higgins at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Chicora, 724-445-3574.