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Mentoring: A Key Part of the Conversation at White House Summit

By: Noelle Hurd I am just returning from a day-long summit at the White House. The summit was sponsored by FLOTUS’s office and was titled Beating the Odds: Successful Strategies from Schools & Youth Agencies that Build Ladders of Opportunity. The summit was part of the First Lady’s Reach Higher Initiative(https://www.whitehouse.gov/reach-higher) which broadly focuses on […]

Part 2: A Novel Program Provides a Network of Support for At-Risk Youth

How a Tapestry of Care Helps Teens Succeed By David Bornstein In the second installment of a two-part series on Thread, the Baltimore-based social support program, author David Bornstein revisits the organization and examines the structural aspects of its programmatic success. From the author’s description of Thread’s programming, “The organization works with public high school […]

Muhlenberg College will require students to recruit mentors from a database of parents and alumni.

By Ellen Wexler John Williams thinks every student should have a mentor, someone who can act as counselor, sounding board, advice giver — and maybe, if the student is lucky, someone who can open doors in the working world. But to find a mentor, students need to learn to network. And for Williams, president of Muhlenberg […]

A Novel Program Provides an Entire Network of Support for At-Risk Youth

In the first of a two-part series in the New York Times, author David Bornstein puts the spotlight on a novel mentoring program being run in Baltimore City Public Schools. The organization, Thread, marshalls volunteer support for at-risk ninth graders. While the idea of utilizing volunteers to provide assistance to at-risk youth is not unique […]

How Adults Can Step Up in Youth Social Activism

Bernadette Sanchez In a recent example of youth social activism, Meggie Noel and Kylie Webster-Cazeau started a campaign via YouTube videos and social media (#BlackAtBLS) to expose the racially hostile environment at their Boston elite public school. They gave examples of teachers who either engaged in racial microagressions and blatant racism and administrators who were […]

LIBN Q&A with Jean Lahage Cohen of Mentor New York

Written by Claude Solnik Mentor New York, with offices in Hauppauge and Manhattan, was created this year by combining the Mentoring Partnership of Long Island and the Mentoring Partnership of New York. As executive director, Jean Lahage Cohen leads an organization serving nearly 500 mentoring programs and 57,000 young people. She talked about the importance […]

Mentoring for Children of Incarcerated Parents – National Mentoring Resource Center Review

Group Review Board G. Roger Jarjoura, Ph.D. (American Institutes for Research) National Mentoring Resource Center This review examines research on mentoring for children of incarcerated parents. The review is organized around four questions:  (1) What is the demonstrated effectiveness of mentoring for children of incarcerated parents? (2) What factors condition or shape the effectiveness of mentoring for […]

New study explores mentor relationship beginnings

DeWitt, D. J., Lipman, E. L., Da Costa, J., Graham, K., Larose, S., Pepler, D., Coyle, J., DuBois, D., Manzano-Munguia, M, & Ferro, A. (2016). Predictors of early versus late match relationship beginnings in Big Brothers Big Sisters community programs. Children and Youth Services Review. doi: Summarized by Jessica Cunningham, B.A., Research Associate, Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring Background: […]

The Importance of High-School Mentors

by Alyza Sebenius (the Atlantic) In her job as a “dream director,” Jessica Valoris is tasked with unleashing the potential of disadvantaged students at an inner-city high school in Washington, D.C. Her employer, a New York-based nonprofit called The Future Project, embeds mentors like Valoris in public schools, characterizing her role as a “midwife of […]

Mentor gets student over the roadblock to college

Written by Alison Martin Shakyra Ragsdale (left) got a scare when trying to raise money for college, but her mentor, Jamila Trimuel, got her through.  In August 2014, no college freshman was more eager to start school than Shakyra Ragsdale, then 18. Bound for Tennessee State University, Shakyra dreamed of her first day of classes […]