Mentoring

From research from Child Trends, a nonprofit research body that conducts research on children, children's families, child well-being, and factors affecting children's lives, amongst other research bodies, claim that one-to-one mentoring is a ‘promising strategy for youth development’. Evaluations made of various mentoring programmes, studied the impact on three major areas that are critical to young people’s success in life: educational achievement; health and safety; and social and emotional development. It was found that mentored youth are likely to have fewer absences from school, better attitudes towards school, fewer incidents of hitting others, less drug and alcohol use, more positive attitudes toward their elders and toward helping in general, and improved relationships with their parents.


Research from the Blue Heart Foundation supports these findings. Evidence suggests that stronger relationships are built as a result of setting healthy boundaries with the mentor to build future relationships outside of the mentor-mentee relationship. By spending time with an adult outside of their families, they improve their communication and interpersonal skills – both of which help with relationships in childhood and later life. Furthermore, the children develop higher self-esteem by mentors helping them highlight their strengths and all that they have achieved personally. Improvements in behaviour at home and at school is also seen. With some of the children who require mentors often being from from unstable homes, mentoring helps them behave well in a wide range of situations and contexts. Importantly for our programme, one-to-one mentoring leads to better school performance and higher enrollment in further education. The children who require mentors often struggle to perform well at school for a variety of reasons and often don't consider going to university. Their ability is often hindered by a lack of guidance to stay focussed on their work, a mentor can provide some guidance with university and further education as a goal to work towards. Mentors don’t only help the mentee make better educational choices, but also lifestyle choices with lower levels of addiction and alcohol abuse.