Mentoring Resources

"Every day, mentors in communities across our Nation provide crucial support and guidance to young people. Whether a day is spent helping with homework, playing catch, or just listening, these moments can have an enormous, lasting effect on a child's life."

— President Barack Obama

Mentoring is an effective way to prevent at-risk youth from becoming involved in delinquency and also to help already delinquent youth change their lives for the better. Mentoring relationships have been shown to improve youth's self-esteem, behavior, and academic performance. For these reasons, OJJDP has long supported mentoring programs, awarding more than $480 million since 1994 to support juvenile and youth mentoring programs.

The resources below provide information about mentoring and links to mentoring organizations.

4-H
4-H focus is the personal growth of the youth membership. Life skills development was built into 4-H projects, activities and events to help youth become contributing, productive, self-directed members of society.

AfterSchool.gov
Afterschool.gov is a one-stop website connecting the public, and particularly afterschool providers, to federal resources that support children and youth during out-of-school time. Afterschool.gov includes resources from a variety of federal agencies, including a searchable database of federal funding sources. While afterschool resources are spread across the Federal government, Afterschool.gov also provides a single location for the public to access this information.

Be a Mentor or Mentee
This GirlsHealth.gov Web site provides information about the benefits of finding or becoming a mentor.

Big Brothers Big Sisters of America
With a network of more than 500 local agencies throughout the nation, maintaining more than 145,000 one-to-one relationships between youth and volunteer adults, operates as the largest and best-known mentoring program in the country.

Boys and Girls Club of America
Programs and services promote and enhance the development of boys and girls by instilling a sense of competence, usefulness, belonging and influence.

Federal Mentoring Council
This Web site provides in-depth information on the Council, its mentoring initiatives and its partner, resources, research findings, and contact information on youth mentoring programs.

The Harvard Mentoring Project
In 1997, the Center for Health Communication of the Harvard School of Public Health launched a national media campaign to promote the growth of the mentoring movement with the goal of linking large numbers of young people with adult mentors. The Center's latest initiative, National Mentoring Month, was launched in January 2002. This annual month-long campaign includes a combination of national media and local media involvement and extensive community outreach.

MENTOR
Widely acknowledged as the nation's premier advocate and resource for the expansion of mentoring initiatives nationwide, MENTOR works with a strong network of state and local Mentoring Partnerships to leverage resources and provide the support and tools that mentoring organizations need to effectively serve young people in their communities.

MentorYouth
Through a cooperative agreement with the Department of Justice, this faith-based mentoring Web site seeking to recruit and refer Christian adults, and the community as a whole, to mentoring programs in their local communities.

The National Mentoring Center
The Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory's National Mentoring Center provides training and technical assistance to mentoring programs through various services and conferences. Created and funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), the National Mentoring Center promotes connections between children and caring adults in the community. The Center also works with OJJDP's Juvenile Mentoring Program sites to develop training and resources for local, one-to-one mentoring programs for at risk-youth.

The National Police Athletics/Activities Leagues Inc.
National PAL exists to prevent juvenile crime and violence by providing civic, athletic, recreational and educational enrichment, mentoring and tutoring to the 400 PAL chapters around the country.

Your Time, Their Future
Developed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, this program highlights the importance of structured positive activities in helping youth resist alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs. The program urges adults to become involved in volunteering, mentoring, and other efforts that help young people ages 7-14 participate in positive activities that build skills, self-discipline, and competence.

Youth for Justice
Funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Youth for Justice is a consortium of national law-related education organizations providing youth with opportunities for meaningful participation in their communities.