1 in 3 young people in the U.S. will reach the age of 19 without having a mentor. This is the mentoring gap in the United States.
Mentoring programs face challenges. In a recent survey conducted by MENTOR, 47% of mentoring programs responded that mentor recruitment was a challenge followed by 44% reporting that fundraising was a challenge. Mentoring programs need both human capital and funding to close the mentoring gap.
As we fulfill our work, MENTOR California seeks to create a culture of thriving for the state’s young people, one caring relationship at a time. Building this culture through our values will allow us to invest in our community in a way that allows all members of the mentoring community to feel inspired for change, ignited for our youth and informed by our work. Through our capacity building and advocacy efforts, we envision a time when mentoring is an on-going and central part of state discussions related to youth and is adopted in all school wide, community based and statewide strategic plans. We are working to ensure that all young people have someone they can call a mentor.
With your support, MENTOR California will be able to provide more awareness around the importance of mentoring, invest in professional development opportunities to ensure quality programming is happening and most importantly, recruit more caring adults to be mentors for the 6 million youth in California!
