New BBBS Report Positions Youth Mentorship as Essential Social Infrastructure

/in /by

Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. (2025). A future built on mentorship: Why mentoring is the essential infrastructure our future needs now. Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.

Key Takeaways

  • A new national report by Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA) positions youth mentorship as essential social infrastructure, comparable to education and public health systems in its long-term impact.
  • Rigorous evidence, including randomized controlled trials and longitudinal studies, demonstrates causal effects of mentoring on mental health, education, economic mobility, and justice involvement.
  • Scaling evidence-based mentoring is both feasible and cost-effective, yielding strong public returns and transformative implications for mentoring programs nationwide.

Introduction

A new report from Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA), A Future Built on Mentorship: Why Mentoring Is the Essential Infrastructure Our Future Needs Now, advances a consequential reframing of youth mentoring: it should be understood not as a discretionary social service, but as core social infrastructure fundamental to healthy development, economic mobility, and community wellbeing.

Situated amid converging crises such as rising youth mental health concerns, chronic absenteeism, workforce uncertainty, and social isolation, the report describes a “disrupted generation” growing up with diminished access to consistent, caring adults. Approximately one in three young people in the United States lacks a mentor, reflecting the erosion of informal mentoring once provided through families, neighborhoods, schools, and community institutions.

Rather than proposing mentorship as a novel solution, the report synthesizes decades of research, including randomized controlled trials and longitudinal studies, demonstrating that mentoring is a proven but underutilized system capable of producing cascading benefits across multiple life domains.

Evidence Base and Key Findings

Central to the report is the Youth Relationships Study, an eight-year randomized controlled trial establishing causal links between mentoring and improved youth outcomes. Across studies, mentored youth show reduced depressive symptoms, stronger emotional regulation, improved school attendance and academic performance, lower substance use and justice involvement, and greater college enrollment and lifetime earnings.

These effects extend beyond individuals. Mentors report increased civic engagement and leadership skills, employers experience reduced turnover, and economic analyses suggest that every $1 invested in mentoring yields approximately $3 in public benefit, reflecting gains across education systems, workforce readiness, and community health.

Implications for Mentoring

This report positions mentoring as a unifying, upstream strategy that simultaneously strengthens educational engagement, workforce preparedness, and community wellbeing. For the field, the evidence underscores the need to treat mentoring as essential infrastructure embedded in schools, workplaces, and communities; grounded in evidence-based practice; and scaled through sustained investment. Mentoring’s impact is not siloed—it is foundational to systems that help young people and societies thrive.

Read the full report here