Mentoring and Leisure-Time Activities for youth at risk

Community-based mentoring and leisure-time activities for youth at risk of offending can have promising effects for a variety of outcomes such as deviant behaviour, violence and delinquency – even when the young people’s negative behaviour is group-related. In addition, if mentoring and leisure-time activities are combined, they can reach and possibly influence and enrich several spheres of the young people’s lives both as individuals and as parts of peer groups. The elements can mutually strengthen an intervention and expand its ways of attracting and continuously engaging youth intensively and for a longer period of time, which, in itself, seem to contribute to a better impact. In an orchestrated and parent-involving effort, the combination can increase chances of success even further.