Why a National Research Agenda for Youth Mentoring?
Because, right now, 15 million young Americans are waiting for mentors. From experience and even limited research, we know mentoring works. But, we need to know more. Mentoring is not a “one-size-fits-all” proposition. Each child has unique needs: the type of mentoring relationship that addresses one child’s needs may not address another’s. We must find out why different types of mentoring are effective for some children, but not for others. We also need to know how we can strengthen and improve mentoring efforts based on this understanding. To find the answers, MENTOR recently convened a National Research Summit on Mentoring, led by mentoring research experts Dr. Jean Rhodes, professor of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Boston, and Dr. David DuBois, associate professor of Community Health Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago. Out of the summit findings, Drs. Rhodes and DuBois developed a National Research Agenda for Youth Mentoring that identifies priority areas for fu
