Laying the Foundation for

Mentoring Success

Youth mentoring is a rapidly growing strategy for improving academic performance and promoting healthful social and behavioral choices. Yet, many new programs focus so intently on the programmatic aspects of mentoring that they ignore other components that are critical to success.

A new publication from NWREL’s National Mentoring Center addresses that problem by homing in on five key pieces or "foundations" that enable a youth mentoring program to flourish. Foundations of Successful Youth Mentoring: A Guidebook for Program Development looks at strong agency capacity, proven program design, effective community partnerships, sustainable resource development, and useful program evaluation. The book discusses each of these foundations at length, explaining why it’s important and what a program’s policies and procedures might look like in practice. The discussion is supplemented with a list of self-assessment questions and key resources. Detailed checklists, timelines, and reading suggestions are also included.

Mark Fulop, director of the National Mentoring Center, says the guide is helpful to both new and established mentoring programs because "it supports quality assurance and elements of best practices." He points out, "The most important piece of mentoring is ensuring the safety of youth. So, by default, recruiting, screening, and training mentors becomes the most critical part." However, mentoring programs also must pay attention to developing resources, community partnerships, and strong agency capacity in order to remain sustainable.

Fulop notes that the guidebook, developed in cooperation with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, has already been widely adopted. A recent request for mentoring proposals by the state of Virginia cites the book and requires potential grantees to follow its procedures.

To order Foundations of Successful Youth Mentoring, see the Document Order Form on Page 7. It’s also available online at www.nwrel.org/mentoring/pdf/foundations.pdf.