Youth Mentoring Sets Sights on Dropout Prevention

To the Many Supporters of SMILES:

It's not too often that we find ourselves ahead of the curve, but in this case SMILES is out front by no less than seven years! It was seven years ago when we established our first pilot mentoring programs at two New Bedford middle schools. The mission was then as it is now - to use structured school-based mentoring as a strategy to help students achieve thier educational potential so that more of them will graduate from high school.

The following press release was issued recently by the three leading national mentoring organizations. It announces a "joint initiative to help combat America's school dropout crisis" and helps direct prospective volunteer mentors to communities with the lowest-performing schools. Fall River and New Bedford are among the 170 communites listed as having the lowest performing schools.

From a practical point of view, SMILES is perfectly positioned to take advantage of this initiative in our effort to achieve continued growth. Hopefully, broader recognition of the primary role mentoring can play in dropout prevention will translate into increased resources to support programs like SMILES that exist for the sole purpose of helping kids do better in school so they will graduate.

Whatever happens next, it's a good day when these three national mentoring organizations publicly and aggressively apply their considerable resources to the important and challenging work of dropout prevention.

- Jim Mathes -
Executive Director
SMILES Mentoring Program
A Program of People, Incorporated

July 16, 2010: Today, MENTOR, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and Mentoring USA launched a joint initiative to help combat America's school dropout crisis that uses a Volunteer Referral Service to route potential mentors to mentoring programs throughout the United States, including 170 communities with the lowest-performing schools.

Known as Academic Achievement through Mentoring, the initiative was first noted at a 2010 National Conference on Volunteering and Service issue forum on mentoring as a solution to the school dropout crisis, where speakers included Joshua DuBois of the White House Office of Faith Based Initiatives, Matilda Cuomo of Mentoring USA, Dr. Larry Wright of MENTOR and Karen Mathis of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.

Today's launch at www.mentoring.org/aatm/ allows potential mentors to access the list of 2,000 identified schools and then type their own zip code into MENTOR's Volunteer Referral Service consisting of more than 5,000 guality mentoring programs. If visitors to the site choose, they then can be connected with a mentoring provider for the identified school district, such as Big Brothers Big Sisters and others.

Mentoring is a youth intervention that research shows can help keep students in school, out of trouble and working to achieve their potential as individuals and as citizens. During the Conference on Volunteering and Service, DuBois cited alarming statistics for the capacity crowd, including:

* 1.3 million American students drop out of high school each year.
* One-third of all children and one-half of low income and minority youth
fail to graduate on time.
* Of minority students who enroll in college, only 10 percent graduate.
* Only 3 percent of today's jobs are available to unskilled employees.
* The 2,000 lowest-performing schools are located in 170 communities.

Research has shown mentoring to have significant positive effects on two early indicators of high school dropouts -- high levels of absenteeism and recurring behavior problems. Youth in mentoring relationships present better attitudes and behaviors at school and are more likely to attend college than their counterparts.