Posts

Mentoring around the country: Hundreds answer the call for mentoring event

Written by Joi-Marie McKenzie, ABC News   One Dallas community truly rallied around a school in need of volunteers. More than 600 men showed up for Billy Earl Dade Middle School’s “Breakfast with Dads” event, where students are encouraged to bring their fathers, or father figures in their lives, for breakfast. “It’s a way to […]

New study shows why disabled veterans should volunteer at nonprofits

Posted by Jessica Martin-WUSTL on August 18, 2011 Disabled veterans who continue to give back on a volunteer basis improve their employment prospects, further their education, and become better role models for their children. Through the Mission Continues fellowship program, a national nonprofit organization, returning veterans receive a stipend to serve as a volunteer at […]

New research shows that volunteering can help keep older adults’ minds sharp

Posted by Sheena Rice, futurity.org Volunteering may improve cognitive function of older adults, especially for women and those with lower levels of education. While the links of volunteering to physical health are well known, its associations with mental functioning are less clear. “Cognitive functions, such as memory, working memory, and processing are essential for living […]

Profiles in Mentoring: Varsha Waishampayan and her work mentoring professionals

By Meg Fry, njbiz.com When Varsha Waishampayan traveled to see her parents in India last year while on sabbatical from her job as director of asset and information management at PricewaterhouseCoopers, she got the same advice she has heard at home for years. This time, it stuck. Her father, a retired professor, was as insistent […]

What’s in it for the mentor? Seinfeld (and others) explain.

by Jean Rhodes In a classic episode of Seinfeld, a puzzled George asks Jerry what a mentor is. “The mentor advises the protégé” says Jerry, and the mentor derives “respect, admiration, prestige.” “Is there any money involved?,” asks George,”would the protégé pick up stuff for the mentor?..laundry, dry cleaning?””It’s a protégé, not a valet!” answers […]

The future of mentoring: An infographic

by Jean Rhodes I recently worked with a talented team at the MacArthur Foundation Connected Learning Research Network to develop an infographic on youth mentoring (below). In essence, I argue that the number of Americans willing to serve as volunteer mentors has remained remarkably stable over the past decade — between 2 million and 2.5 million, or […]

Volunteering can be a multigenerational family affair

By Chris Farrell, Next Avenue Contributor  Fiftysomething Linda Meadows, a volunteer with the AmeriCorps Reading Partners program, is tutoring students at the library of Cherry Hill Elementary in south Baltimore, a low-income, mostly African-American neighborhood. “I like to encourage young people. They need to be told they can do it,” she says. For Meadows, Reading […]

Predicting the future of mentoring programs

by Jean Rhodes I predict that formal mentoring programs will become increasingly specialized, professionalized, and evidence-based in the years ahead. This is a positive development, particularly given that our field’s two most important barometers of success—the number of adults willing to serve as volunteer mentors and the effectiveness of these efforts—have not changed in the past […]

From poetry to justice: Mentors as partners in youth’s critical awareness and activism

by Jean Rhodes Sixteen-year old Kayla Harris loves poetry. She pens verses in the margins of her notebooks during class, fine tuning them on the bus as it rattles from her public school in Boston’s West Roxbury neighborhood to her grandmother’s apartment in nearby Mattapan. She composes them in her head each night, tuning out […]

Being kind serves to elevate your own well-being

Written by Douglas LaBier and originally posted on the Huffington Post I came across this small but useful study from Oxford researchers, and it caught my attention because it’s one more bit of evidence of our underlying interconnectedness. It shows that doing something positive for others enhances our own happiness. The study consisted of a […]