Youth mentoring

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Youth mentoring is the process of matching mentors with young people who need or want a caring, responsible adult in their lives. Adult mentors are usually unrelated to the child or teen and work as volunteers through a community-, school-, or church-based social service program.

Although informal mentoring relationships exist, formal, high-quality mentoring matches made through local or state mentoring organizations are often the most effective.

A more formal definition of youth mentoring is provided by the Web site InfEd:

“The classic definition of mentoring is of an older experienced guide who is acceptable to the young person and who can help ease the transition to adulthood by a mix of support and challenge. In this sense it is a developmental relationship in which the young person is inducted into the world of adulthood.” Hamilton, 1991; Freedman, 1995)

During the last 20 years, a greater awareness of the power of mentoring has emerged nationwide—the need for formal organizations to work to match more young people with mentors in an effort to provide support and structure for children at risk.

A study of the Big Brothers Big Sisters of America program showed that young people who had a consistently caring and supportive adult as a mentor were significantly less likely to try drugs or alcohol, had better school attendance and academic performance, and were less likely to experience violence.^[1]

1 Mentoring Children of Prisoners
2 References
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Mentoring Children of Prisoners

In January 2002, President George W. Bush signed a bill expanding the Safe and Stable Families Program (Public Law 107–133)^[2], which included authorization for a mentoring program for children of prisoners; and, in his 2003 State of the Union Address, he proposed a $150 million initiative that would bring mentors to 100,000 of these children.

Since then, the Family and Youth Services Bureau within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been funding community- and faith-based organizations to provide mentors to children and youth with incarcerated parents.

According to a U.S. Senate Report, children of prisoners are six times more likely than other children to be incarcerated at some point in their lives. Without effective intervention strategies, as many as 70 percent of these children will become involved with the criminal justice system.^[3]

[edit] References

^ Joseph P.Tierney and Jean Baldwin Grossman, with Nancy L. Resch. Making a Difference: An Impact Study of Big Brothers Big Sisters. 1995. Philadelphia: Public/Private Ventures.
^ Fact Sheet: Mentoring Children of Prisoners Program, Retrieved on October 10, 2007
^ Senate Report 106-404: Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriation Bill, 2001. September 8, 2000, p. 56.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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