DECEMBER 13, 2018
BY: MERLYNE PIERRE, PROGRAM MANAGER, MENTOR: THE NATIONAL MENTORING PARTNERSHIP

As 2018 comes to a close, the NMRC team would like to thank this community of mentoring and youth development practitioners, researchers, advocates and others for your relentless work to support youth across America and equip them with relationships, skills, and experiences to achieve their goals. Now is a great time for us to think back on what we have accomplished, and start mapping out the groundwork for the work 2019 has in store.

For the OJJDP NMRC, 2018 has been an exciting year of spotlights on mentoring programs, research, and updates on existing tools and evidence reviews. The NMRC Research Board published an online module on Supporting and Inspiring Native Youth along with an evidence review on mentoring for youth with disabilities, look out for more content coming soon on mentoring for American Indian and Alaska Native youth. Additionally, program reviews were added, which provided insight on the Peraj Mentoring Program, don’t forget to read the Insights for Practitioners. Updates were made to practice reviews with additional secondary data analysis, such as Pre-Match Mentor Training and the Measurement Guidance Toolkit, which now includes 9 new measures of mentoring relationship quality for use in mentoring program evaluations. Supplementary Research Board-reviewed resources were added, including How to Build a Successful Mentoring Program Using the Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring, and we launched new podcast series, Reflections in Research.

DECEMBER 11, 2018
BY: CAMILLE BRUGH AND AMANDA STEWART, BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS (BBBS) CENTRAL INDIANA

Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) Central Indiana

MENTOR brings you a second blog post from our series of highlighting the work of grantees from the Mentoring Enhancement Demonstration Project (MEDP) funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. This innovative project, which began in FY 2012, was intended to test whether mentoring programs could make enhancements to their usual services that strengthened mentors’ ability to serve as advocates and take on more of an explicit teaching role with their mentees. The hope was that this approach might strengthen mentor-mentee relationships and lead to stronger outcomes for youth.

Now that the evaluation of the project is coming to a close, we wanted to highlight the unique and innovative approaches to teaching and advocacy developed by several of the funded organizations. These posts highlight their excellent work and can illustrate for other mentoring programs how they might approach program improvements and participate in research projects in the future. The National Mentoring Resource Center thanks each grantee for their contributions to the project and for sharing their reflections with us here.

To capture the experience of Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) Central Indiana, we decided to learn more about the project through an interview. Check out what they had to say below and feel free to leave a comment!

DECEMBER 6, 2018
BY: JOLENE BUNNELL, BRANDON SUMMERS AND KATHY RIGGS, UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY/4-H MENTORING

Utah State University / 4-H Mentoring

This blog post is part of a brief series MENTOR has put together highlighting the work of grantees of Mentoring Enhancement Demonstration Project (MEDP) funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. This innovative project, which began in FY 2012, was intended to test whether mentoring programs could make enhancements to their usual services that strengthened mentors’ ability to serve as advocates and take on more of an explicit teaching role with their mentees. The hope was that this approach might strengthen mentor-mentee relationships and lead to stronger outcomes for youth.

Now that the evaluation of the project is coming to a close, we wanted to highlight the unique and innovative approaches to teaching and advocacy developed by several of the funded organizations. These posts highlight their excellent work and can illustrate for other mentoring programs how they might approach program improvements and participate in research projects in the future. The National Mentoring Resource Center thanks each grantee for their contributions to the project and for sharing their reflections with us here.

Below is one of many more blog posts to come detailing MEDP grantees wonderful contributions to the mentoring field.

NOVEMBER 14, 2018
BY: ABIGAIL ELLIS M.S.W., EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, MENTOR INDEPENDENCE REGION

The Garage Community and Youth Center has been a haven for middle and high school youth living near their two sites in Kennett Square and West Grove, Pennsylvania. Amongst diverse out of school time, programs like arts, community service activities, career coaching, and tutoring, their longstanding mentoring program was a cornerstone for the center. Operated by a tenured staff member with deep organizational knowledge, the program provided high quality mentoring experiences year over year to the Garage students.  

While students were receiving high quality services, the Garage staff ran into a common problem. Executive Director Kristin Proto says, "When one person is running [the program], the process lives in that person's head. Doing this assessment can help bring that knowledge back to the organization. We can ask questions like, how does what we say we do translate into what happens on the ground? Is it working? Is what we put into place five years ago still relevant?"