OUR MISSION

Located in central Santa Ana, the Orange County Bar Foundation (OCBF) is committed to its mission of keeping at-risk youth out of jail, in school, healthy, and drug free through education, counseling, and mentoring.  Our goal is to reach at-risk youth early and provide long-term solutions to the obstacles they face.  This is accomplished by offering specialized services to help youth make positive and healthy life choices.  For many of the youth we serve, this includes giving them a second chance to get back on the right path.

Jim Rose understands the tremendous value of having a second chance.  He was 15 when he broke into a car one night with his friends.  After stealing some cassette tapes, Jim was confronted by a police detective later that evening.  Rather than entering the juvenile justice system, he was offered the chance to attend the Shortstop program.

It was an opportunity that changed his life forever.  Twenty-two years later, Jim still remembers his experience in Shortstop, including what it felt like to sit in the holding cell and listen to parolees talk about their time in jail.  Shortstop helped him understand the consequences of his actions and change the course of his life.  Jim is now a corporal with the Santa Ana Police Department and returns to Shortstop occasionally as an instructor.  “A lot of these kids are not bad kids,” he says. “They just screwed up, and now it’s time to get them back on the right path."

Stop Short of Addiction is a state-certified substance abuse program that works with youth drug offenders.  Based on our successful Shortstop model, Stop Short of Addiction provides an alternative to detention and intensive legal education, while also providing youth and parents with group-level substance abuse treatment.

In partnership with Santa Ana schools and community-based agencies, Chicas aggressively tackles the risk factors associated with STD/HIV infection and substance abuse. Chicas provides nine months of after-school services to Latinas, ages 11-14, in Santa Ana that offer mentoring and interactive education on women's health, pregnancy, STDs and HIV/AIDS.  Youth are also taught valuable life and coping skills to prevent the risk of gang involvement and substance use.

• Ethnic and gender pride
• HIV/AIDS and STD health education and risk reduction
• Assertiveness training and coping skills
• Free on-site HIV testing and health care linkages

is a 14-week intervention targeting Latinas, 26-50 years of age, that have adolescent daughters.  Madres works to reduce the risk of HIV infection among these women and their family members.  This free program provides mothers with communication techniques to address alcohol and drug use, as well as early sexual activity, STDs and HIV infection.

provides low-income Latino high school students with the academic, social, and financial support needed to graduate from high school and succeed in college. This is accomplished largely through the support of Latino college-student mentors, who are the voice of encouragement that says, "If I can do it, you can do it!"  And indeed they do.  Not only do all of the youth we serve go on to attend college, but 85% of our students precede straight to four-year universities.

PROJECT SELF

With the goal of investing in tomorrow's leaders, Project SELF (Summer Employment in Law Firms) provides low-income, minority high school juniors with paid, hands-on summer internships at local law firms and businesses.  Project SELF works to reduce the risk of juvenile delinquency by providing youth with positive alternatives for spending their summers, access to professional and career environments they would not otherwise be exposed to and the support of positive adult mentors.