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Youth mentoring is the process of matching caring, concerned adults with young people who may be at risk. The adult is usually unrelated and works as a volunteer through a community, school or church based social service program.

A more formal definition of youth mentoring is provided by the website InFed:

"The classic definition of mentoring is of an older experienced guide who is acceptable to the young person and who can help ease the transition to adulthood by a mix of support and challenge. In this sense it is a developmental relationship in which the young person is inducted into the world of adulthood (Hamilton, 1991; Freedman, 1995)."

Many people have "natural mentors" as they grow up and transition into adulthood. These people might be aunts or uncles, grandparents, neighbors, teachers, pastors, coaches or family friends. These relationships are valuable to young people in many ways.

However, many young people do not have these natural mentors (for a variety of reasons).

So, social service programs have developed to fill this gap. These social service programs are of many varieties. Some developed from faith communities. Others are funded by government programs. Still others are community based without any formal affiliations. But they all share the common goal of strengthening our communities by providing mentors for young people.

Intuitively we know youth mentoring is good for young people. However, many studies have provided evidence that youth mentoring has many positive outcomes for young people, adults and their communities.

According to the National Mentoring Partnership, youth mentoring helps produce benefits such as:

• young people tend to stay in school
• young people tend to get better grades
• young people improve their self-esteem
• young people are less likely to start using drugs or alcohol
• young people learn to get along better with others

• MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership
• MentorYouth.com - More Mentors for Youth Campaign
• Mentoring Partnership of Minnesota
• Kinship Mentoring Program
• Big Brothers Big Sisters of America
• Maryland Mentoring Partnership
• International Mentoring Network Organization
• The Stream E-mentoring (UK)