Mentoring
Positive youth development research has long demonstrated that youth benefit from close, caring relationships with adults who serve as positive role models (Jekielek, Moore, & Hair, 2002). Today, 8.5 million youth continue to lack supportive, sustained relationships with caring adults (Cavell, DuBois, Karcher, Keller, & Rhodes, 2009). Mentoring—which matches youth or “mentees” with responsible, caring “mentors,” usually adults—has been growing in popularity as both a prevention and intervention strategy over the past decades. Mentoring provides youth with mentors who can develop an emotional bond with the mentee, have greater experience than the mentee, and can provide support, guidance, and opportunities to help youth succeed in life and meet their goals (DuBois and Karcher, 2005). Mentoring relationships can be formal or informal with substantial variation, but the essential components include creating caring, empathetic, consistent, and long-lasting relationships, often with some combination of role modeling, teaching, and advising.
Cavell, T., DuBois, D., Karcher, M., Keller, T., & Rhodes, J. (2009). Strengthening mentoring opportunities for at-risk youth. Retrieved from http://www.mentoring.org/downloads/mentoring_1233.pdf
DuBois, D. L. & Karcher, M. (2005). Youth mentoring: Theory, research, practice. In D. L. DuBois & M. J. Karcher (Eds.), Handbook of youth mentoring (pp. 1-13). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Jekielek, S., Moore K. A., & Hair, E. C. (2002). Mentoring programs and youth development: A synthesis. Washington, DC: Child Trends. Retrieved from http://www.childtrends.org/files/MentoringSynthesisFINAL2.6.02Jan.pdf
Girls Education and Mentoring Services
Andrea, a runaway youth and victim of sexual exploitation, battled isolation and feelings of worthlessness, faced physical and mental abuse, and bounced in and out of jail, unable to lessen the hold that her exploiter had on her. She eventually escaped the exploitation with the help of GEMS, or Girls Education and Mentoring Services, an organization in New York that enables girls like Andrea to exit “the life.”
Engineering students mentor at middle school with STARBASE
This spring through the STARBASE Nebraska program, six University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Engineering students have dedicated an hour each week to go back to sixth grade and help the next generation of engineers.
A Mentoring Charity Blooms in Baltimore
The biggest challenge for a small, growing mentoring program can be convincing caring adults to take the first step and volunteer to help a child. To that end, Baltimore's Liberty Learning Center, an after-school facility founded in 2005 for inner-city youth, will use this year's National Mentoring Month as a springboard to gain greater exposure and enlist more adults in its cause.
A Match Made in Pittsburgh Cultivates a Young Girl's Strengths
Eleven-year-old Summer needed a positive environment where she could be a child and not grow up too fast. Gwyneth Gaul, a 28-year-old fundraiser, provides that positivity as Summer's mentor. The two were "matched" by Amachi Pittsburgh, which pairs children of incarcerated parents with caring adults.
About Mentoring
Mentoring in Practice
Adults Who Act as Mentors
Different Types of Mentoring
Characteristics of Mentoring Relationships
Challenges and Lessons Learned from Mentoring Relationships
Best Practices for Mentoring Programs
Considerations for Starting a Mentoring Program
Explore FindYouthInfo's Federal Links database to identify federal programs and resources related to Mentoring.
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