Mentoring A Synthesis of P PV s Research 1988 1995 Cynthia L Sipe Alice F Emerson Board Chair Funders of P PV s Mentoring Agenda 1988 1995 Gary Walker Anonymous President Board of Directors Rex D Adams William R Anton Michael A Bailin Douglas J Besharov Amalia V Betanzos Roy J Bostock Alan K Campbell Yvonne Chan John J DiIulio Jr Alice F Emerson Mitchell S Fromstein Susan Fuhrman David W Hornbeck Siobhan Oppenheimer Nicolau Marion Pines John W Porter Harold A Richman Gary Walker Eddie N Williams William Julius Wilson Research Advisory Committe The Amelior Foundation The American Association of Retired Persons Carnegie Corporation of New York Cigna Foundation Columbia University The Commonwealth Fund The Ford Foundation The Luke B Hancock Foundation Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation Lilly Endowment Inc The John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation One to One Partnership The Pew Charitable Trusts The Pinkerton Foundation Retirement Research Foundation The Skillman Foundation Marta Tienda Chair Jacquelynne Eccles Ronald Ferguson Frank Furstenberg Robinson Hollister Alan Krueger Frank Levy Katherine Newman Public Private Ventures is a national nonprofit organization that seeks to improve youth policies and programs P PV designs tests and studies initiatives that increase supports and access to opportunity for teenagers in low income communities and provides training and technical assistance to practitioners and programs in the youth field Cover photo Courtesy of Big Brothers Big Sisters Mentoring A Synthesis of P PV s Research 1988 1995 Cynthia L Sipe Acknowledgments Preparation of this synthesis of P PV s research on mentoring over the past eight years was funded by a grant from The Commonwealth Fund Its support of our work in this area is greatly appreciated Producing a document that draws together the lessons of such a large body of research is a challenging undertaking and could not have been accomplished without the input of my colleagues at P PV Over the years many P PV staff have been involved with the research on mentoring Reviewing their reports deepened my appreciation of the quality of the research and the clarity of their presentations of the findings Early drafts of this report were reviewed by several P PV staff including Jean Grossman Joe Tierney Michelle Gambone Kristine Morrow Dine Watson Jeffrey Greim Mike Sack Tom Smith and Natalie Jaffe They not only contributed to decisions about how to focus the report but also provided a check on the accuracy of my conclusions Throughout the process of writing and revising the report Gary Walker s insights and ideas for how best to present the information were critical in shaping the final product he was also responsible for much of the content in the final section of the report Mark Hughes provided valuable suggestions for the report s design Finally I would like to thank P PV s support staff who contributed to the final product Audrey Walmsley was responsible for word processing and entering changes through the multiple drafts of the document Maxine Sherman did the final processing and proofreading Contents Foreword i I Mentoring A Synthesis of P PV s Research 1988 1995 Introduction 1 The Major Findings 5 Where Does Mentoring Go from Here 15 II Summaries of P PV s 10 Mentoring Reports 1988 1995 20 III Bibliography 68 i Foreword In 1988 Public Private Ventures P PV published Partners in Growth Elder Mentors and At Risk Youth the first study in what was to become for P PV an extended and extensive examination of mentoring for adolescents That first study suggested that mentoring had great potential to improve the lives and prospects of disadvantaged teenagers The report presented in this volume is a synthesis of what we have learned in the subsequent eight years and identifies the key issues that remain open Also included are summaries of the 10 reports on which the synthesis is based as well as a bibliography drawn from all the reports Our overall conclusions are clear First it is possible to create between an adult and a youth who were previously strangers a relationship that markedly advances the youth s development and markedly deters his or her detrimental behavior Second these relationships can be fostered with a high degree of success in widely varying localities without the presence of charisma or other special factors whose rarity is often cited as a barrier to expansion of effective interventions The simplicity effectiveness and widespread applicability of mentoring should not seduce us into thinking that its execution offers no worthy challenges Mentoring s potential for intimacy between previous strangers creates the possibility for benefits and risks that many more complex interventions simply do not contain It works best within a supportive structure and when the adult mentor behaves in certain ways This report spells out the supportive structures and behaviors that produce effective mentoring Our best estimate is that there are now in the United States no more than 350 000 mentors and at least several million youth who would accept and benefit from adult mentoring Thus securing the full benefits of mentoring depends in good part on its programmatic expansion But securing those benefits also rests on the imaginative integration of mentoring s lessons into other youth focused efforts to make our schools more effective to build a transition between school or the street and work to lower the recidivism of young offenders to reduce the attraction of gangs violence and drugs to reduce teen pregnancy and improve teen parenting For it is unlikely that any initiative to assist young people will make much difference unless it is securely and determinedly rooted in building trusting relationships between them and adults ii In a sense mentoring is an excellent example of the puzzling disagreement in the youth field between those who conclude We know what works let s just get on with it and others who say Nothing works well for disadvantaged adolescents social programs are too little and too late for that age group The truth lies in the rockier ground between we do know a lot about what helps youth develop and transition effectively to adulthood And much of what we do know is not esoteric but accessible to common sense like the need for caring adults The real issue is whether we can stimulate create and expand these common sense conditions Mentoring has successfully traversed that rocky terrain We should mine its