The Need for Mentoring Programs

Mentors for whom?

Every young person requires a caring adult mentor in order to develop the resilience needed to get through the challenges of life. Quality mentoring is an effective way to prevent future difficulties and create positive outcomes*. Fortunately, many children and youth receive the support and guidance they require through informal mentoring relationships with parents, relatives, neighbors, teachers, coaches and others.

Sadly however, informal mentors are not available to many of the young people in greatest need of mentoring, due to their social isolation or unstable life situations. Others in need of positive mentors have filled the void with relationships that provide undesirable influences.

Mentors for how many?

It is difficult to estimate exactly how many Canadian children and youth are in need of the additional support of formal mentoring relationships. But wait lists for existing mentoring programs and troubling statistics regarding the prevalence of youth related problems seem to indicate that established programs are only scratching the surface of the need.

Mentoring programs at what cost?

The short answer is that it will involve considerable but not insurmountable costs. The more significant question, though, is, "What is the cost of not providing mentoring programs?" Statistics on youth crime, illiteracy, dropouts, pregnancies, suicide and other youth tragedies can only begin to tally the cost of the lack of appropriate adult mentors for Canada's children and youth. We know that quality mentoring programs work to help prevent many of these ills and to create positive outcomes*, and do so cost-efficiently. The real tragedy, then, is that this solution is not more widely available to our country's young people.

How can we meet the need?

Certainly a greater number and wider variety of formal mentoring programs could help relieve this need. But these must be quality mentoring programs, founded on well-developed infrastructures, containing the elements that are essential to responsible mentoring. To achieve this goal, we must research and deliver effective new models of mentoring. We must encourage more adults to commit to involving themselves in the lives of children and youth. And we must find creative solutions to mentoring programs' challenges, like recruitment, child safety, funding, and legal liabilities.

*For examples of research substantiating this claim, examine the publications of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, and Public/Private Ventures.

Does mentoring really create magic, or is it too good to be true? To find out, have a look at the ideals and realities of mentoring.

<< previous  |  next >>