
"A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself."
January is National Mentoring Month (NMM)--the largest-scale campaign to promote the power and value of mentoring nationwide. The campaign was launched in 2002 by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Mentor: The National Mentoring Partnership. Around the country this month, people will be celebrating the tremendous impact that mentoring has on individual lives.
History
Youth Mentoring
- Students who meet regularly with their mentors are 52% less likely than their peers to skip a day of school and 37% less likely to skip a class. (Public / Private Ventures study of Big Brothers Big Sisters)
- Young adults who face an opportunity gap but have a mentor are 55% more likely to be enrolled in college than those who did not have a mentor. (The Mentoring Effect, 2014)
- Mentored students are 46% less likely to begin using illegal drugs (Public/Private Ventures study of Big Brothers Big Sisters)
Aside from the social benefits, there’s an economic imperative to connecting young people with mentors, too. The 2014 The Mentoring Effect report--commissioned by MENTOR--found that “young adults who are not connected cost society $93 billion annually in lost wages, taxes, and social services. On the other hand, recent data show that every dollar invested in quality youth mentoring programs yields a $3 return in benefits.”
Corporate Mentoring
An American Society for Training and Development study found that 71% of Fortune 500 companies have some type of corporate mentorship program. These include: Google, General Electric, Sodexo, Intel and Caterpillar. It also found that 75% of private sector executives say mentoring has been critical in their own career development.
College Mentoring
- A U.S. Department of Education study found that students who received mentoring from advisors regularly during the first year in college had a 170% greater change of completing their bachelors degree than those that did not.
- One of Mentor Collective's randomized controlled trials showed that students offered our mentorship program were 9% more likely to stay in school and 5 times less likely to be on academic probation.
With across-the-board success in all types of mentorship programs, we hope you will join us during National Mentoring Month to raise awareness of the life-changing benefits of mentor/mentee relationships.
Laird, Pamela Walker (2006). Pull: Networking and Success since Benjamin Franklin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674025530.