CLEARFIELD – January is National Mentoring Month.
Children’s Aid Society’s Youth Mentoring is celebrating the mentors who change the life of a child and bringing awareness to the children who are waiting for a mentor.
Youth Mentoring matches mentors with children who need or want a caring, responsible adult in their lives. The supportive, healthy relationships formed between mentors and mentees are both immediate and long-term and contribute to a host of benefits for mentors and mentees.
Research shows that mentors play a powerful role in providing young people with the tools to make positive choices, attend and engage in school and reduce or avoid negative behaviors. In turn, these young people are:
- 55 percent more likely to be enrolled in college.
- 81 percent more likely to report participating regularly in sports or extracurricular activities.
- 78 percent more likely to volunteer regularly in their communities.
- More than twice as likely to say they held a leadership position in a club or sports team.
Yet, the same research shows that one in three young people in our country will grow up without a mentor. In this community-based program, adult volunteers provide special friendship and support to children.
Matches get to share activities that they both enjoy such as fishing, playing board games or baking cookies.
In the school-based program, mentors are high school volunteers who are matched with elementary students. Matches work on homework, have a snack, learn a social skill lesson and have free time to play.
Currently, there are 19 children matched within the community and school-based programs. However, there are 10 children on a waiting list to be matched with a mentor in the community-based program.
National Mentoring Month is the time of year where engagement from community members interested in becoming a mentor is highest. This year society staff are encouraging the public to be involved by becoming a mentor.
Mentoring relationships are at their best when connections are made between a caring adult and a young person who knows that someone is there to help guide them through life choices. Mentors change the life of a child for the better, forever.
To learn more about mentoring or start the process of becoming a mentor, please e-mail mentoring@childaid.org or call 814-765-2686, x204.
