Despite the strength and resilience that military families demonstrate, military youth can experience socioemotional and academic issues as a natural response to frequent change and uncertainty. Amid increased calls to support service members and their families, concerted efforts have been made to develop mentoring programs specifically for…

As the youth mentoring field has expanded since MENTOR's founding in 1990, so have the questions about the scope of mentoring relationships, who is finding the mentoring they need, and who is being left behind. MENTOR began its efforts to answer these questions almost a decade ago with the publication of "The Mentoring Effect…

As the youth mentoring field has expanded and diversified in America over the last 30-plus years, many adults who care about getting these valuable relationships to more young people have asked questions about the scope and scale of mentoring in American society. In 2014, MENTOR first started to examine these societal level trends in a seminal…

There have been many meaningful studies over the last quarter century that have explored how young people build critical consciousness, how mentors and other caring adults can support that process, and the benefits that young people experience when they build their sociopolitical understanding and work to make the world around them a better place.…

One of the realities of being in a mentoring relationship is that, like all human relationships, it will have its ups and downs, moments of joy and moments of challenge. Mentors are not simply friends to young people, nor are they simply "authority figures." They show up to these relationships with purpose and a desire to help that young…

This publication is a supplementary resource to MENTOR's long-standing program guidance document, "The Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring™" (ED594036). For over 20 years, the various iterations of that document (now in its 4th edition) have served as a starting point for community leaders and youth-serving professionals looking…

E-mentoring has, until recently, constituted a fairly small niche of the programmatic mentoring landscape. But nothing has spurred the adoption of virtual mentoring services more than the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020. Almost overnight, the nation's mentoring programs faced an uncertain future in which their main objective…

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that there are over 400,000 children currently in foster care in the United States. Most youth are in the system for at least a year, with 38% for two years or longer. The most common placement setting for children in foster care is nonrelative foster family homes; about half of youth exit…

In 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that 8% of youth in grades 9-12 reported being in a physical fight one or more times in the 12 months preceding the survey, with more than 7% reporting being threatened or injured with a weapon on school property. Homicide is the 3rd leading cause of…

One of the simple truths about mentoring young people is that it is a complex activity, one that brings a wide variety of individuals together, often during moments of hardship or transition, to create something new, unique, and personally meaningful. Like all human relationships, mentoring relationships require not just initial connection, but…

To meet emerging needs of the mentoring field and inform funders and policymakers about how to strengthen the mentoring movement, MENTOR has developed a Research Agenda outlining four key areas for future mentoring research. Many researchers, practitioners, and thought-leaders collaborated on this agenda, providing expertise and insight into ways…

Mentorship, and the notion of who is a mentor, both hold a revered place for boys and young men of color (BYMOC). Mentoring programs must help mentees build intellectual confidence, academic self-esteem, and an overall belief that they are capable of overcoming the systemic barriers to their success in school. MENTOR: The National Mentoring…

In the summer of 2017, MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership and its partners at AT&T set out on an ambitious data collection and research project intended to capture the perceptions, beliefs, and activities of American adults about the topic of youth mentoring. One core objective of this first-of-its-kind project is the focus of this…

MENTOR's newest resource takes the cornerstone best-practice guide for mentoring, the "Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring™," and offers research-backed and practice-based tips specifically for STEM mentoring programs. "The STEM Supplement to the Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring™" provides additional…

With the release of this comprehensive new report, MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership has provided the mentoring field with important new data about the scope of mentoring in the United States. This report advances what is understood about mentoring in several important ways. First, it moves beyond a simple head count to explore Americans'…