One-on-One: Recruiting Mentors

Over 500,000 youth end up in foster care each year. Another 500,000 youth become juvenile offenders and land in a residential facility or on probation. Without support and appropriate modeling from a caring adult, these children’s lives may well be on a further downward trajectory.

For children involved in the court system through foster care or as juvenile offenders, a mentor can provide that vital caring relationship which can help to change the course of their lives. However, finding capable adults with the time and emotional commitment to mentor children with a criminal record or in foster care is an enormous challenge.

“Because many of these kids have absentee parents, the system—either juvenile justice or foster care—is responsible for them. So finding them a mentor is key,” says Ivy Jones Turner, the director for the Mentoring System Involved Youth project at EDC. “We provide training and support to mentoring programs, helping them address issues like mentor recruitment.”

For example, like most mentor programs, Mentor Portland in Oregon is consistently trying to attract male mentors. Recently they revamped their outreach materials to appeal to men, using photos that include male mentors with youth. Rather than describing a mentor as helping or supporting a child, they now use language such as “discover the adventure of mentoring” which implies mentoring is fun and energetic.

Mentor Portland also discovered the importance of using the internet to reach potential mentors. They have a heavy web presence through their dynamic website, listserves, regular email blasts and postings on Craigslist and local calendars.

“The web is incredibly powerful for us,” says Elaine Monterastelli, the outreach coordinator for Mentor Portland. “In the last fiscal year, 82% of the people who inquired about becoming mentors with us came directly from the web.”

In Virginia, Lutheran Family Services faced the additional challenge of recruiting mentors as well as finding youth in need of support.

“Lutheran Family Services really needed to develop more targeted connections within the community,” said Jones Turner. “So together we developed an outreach strategy, and, building on their project track record of establishing partnerships, we identified specific organizations that would connect them with more male mentors and youth.”

Establishing stronger relationships with other child welfare agencies as a source of referrals wasn’t enough. So they began to connect with schools and local law enforcement officials in contact with youth who might benefit from a mentor. They partnered with an afterschool program and a summer camp for foster care youth.

They also built relationships with fraternities and businesses in the community. Local sports venues provided free tickets to games for mentors and youth. The local radio station agreed to play public service announcements to help recruit mentors. Starbucks offered to display their posters and provide snacks for their mentoring events. As a result of these efforts, in less than a year Lutheran Family Services tripled their recruitment of mentors.

“EDC has been one of our most valuable partnerships,” said Philip Day, Mentoring Coordinator for Lutheran Family Services. “Volunteer mentoring was new to my agency. The guidance and encouragement from EDC was essential in helping us get this service developed from scratch. Our success is due in part to the help we received from them.”