Posts

Mentoring outside city limits: New Rural Mentoring Toolkit produced by MANY

There is one universal truth for all youth, anywhere—and that is that any young person can benefit from a mentoring relationship. Whether your community is urban, ex-urban, suburban, or rural, the youth in your schools and neighborhoods could use a strong, positive role model. Likewise, each type of community comes with its own strengths and […]

Donors bet big on paid mentoring: Does it work?

Written by Michael Fitzgerald, The Chronicle of Social Change Mentoring saved 41-year-old Gary Clemons’ life. Separated from his mother at age 5, running with violent gangs at 15, father to a visually disabled child at 19, and homeless at 24 — Clemons couldn’t imagine that the mentors who helped him mount these challenges would guide […]

Registration now open: The 2018 National Family and Community Engagement Conference

July 11-13, 2018 in Cleveland, OH The Institute for Educational Leadership’s 2018 National Family and Community Engagement Conference will take place on July 11-13, 2018 in Cleveland, OH. This is an excellent capacity building opportunity for educators, other para-professionals, parent leaders and a range of stakeholders to learn strategies and best practices that focus on […]

New research investigates the benefits of mindfulness for college mentors

Editor’s Note: Mentor training is a key piece of many mentoring programs. Mentor-centric skills are an area that is less-studied than the ways in which mentors can relate to their mentees, foster quality relationships, and so on. This study takes some initial steps in the process of finding ways that mindfulness-based practices may be able […]

Supporting mentoring relationships of youth in foster care: Do program practices predict match length?

Stelter, R., Kupersmidt, J.,& Stump, K.(2018).Supporting mentoring relationships of youth in foster care: Do program practices predict match length? American Journal of Community Psychology, Apr 15, 2018. Summary (reprinted from the Abstract) Implementation of research- and safety-based program practices enhance the longevity of mentoring relationships, in general; however, little is known about how mentoring programs might support the relationships […]

What metric should we use to measure program success?

Let’s focus on how large program effects are, not how probable they are. By Michael Karcher Editors Note: In this post, Professor Michael Karcher shares with us his considerable expertise in statistics and program evaluation. In doing so, he makes a strong and compelling case for using “effect sizes” as opposed to “statistical significance” as […]

Mentor Expert

UK’s Children’s Commission releases new report on youth mentoring

by Anne Longfield The recent tragic murders in London have again brought home how urgently we need to do more to stop young people joining gangs and becoming involved in violent crime. The drugs trade is absolutely ruthless. It grooms children, uses them and then discards them. The police have told me that the level […]

Getting active can help boost mentors’ and mentees’ happiness: New research

Written by Justin Preston The benefits of exercise in helping serve as one piece of the puzzle in combating depression and anxiety have been well-documented. Less attention has been paid to the ways in which people who are not depressed may be helped by physical activity. In a recent review of studies on exercise in […]

Embedded mentoring: An important new approach to helping today’s youth

by Jean Rhodes My friend Rick recently shared a graduation photo with his long-time mentee that conveyed so much love and pride I was moved to tears. Rick and Kevin were paired through a program that embraces the “friendship” model. Rather than take a focused, skills approach, Rick was tasked only with forging a close, […]

Are current mentoring models bad for kids’ health?

BERNADETTE SÁNCHEZ, PHD, NMRC RESEARCH BOARD MEMBER & PROFESSOR AT DEPAUL UNIVERSITY Editor’s Note: This blog article was originally posted on the National Mentoring Resource Center website. NMRC Research Board members were asked to share their key insights from last year’s National Mentoring Summit based on a workshop they lead, an innovation they learned about, […]