For nearly 100 years Big Brothers/Big Sisters has defined the enterprise of face-to-face connecting in America so completely that it owns the trademark, One to One. It is also one of the best-known youth programmes in America. A 1994 Gallup poll found that 78 percent of Americans are aware of Big Brothers/Big Sisters, which matches 75,000 children from single-parent homes ('Littles') with volunteer mentors ('Bigs') through more than 500 chapters nationwide.
The activities encouraged by the programme are primarily informal and friendly. Depending on a youngster's interests, a mentor takes the child out to eat, to watch a ballgame, to go to a concert, or just to talk - on average three times a month, three and a half hours each time. That amounts to 126 hours a year, or about three 40-hour work weeks, which is no small commitment.
Over the past decade hundreds of corporations, universities, youth organisations, and religious and civic groups have hopped on the mentoring bandwagon. Nationally, a wide range of groups have joined Big Brothers/Big Sisters in promoting the mentoring cause, from Proctor and Gamble to the Rainbow Coalition. California, New York, and Rhode Island have established statewide mentoring campaigns, with citywide efforts launched to considerable fanfare in Kansas City, Newark, Oakland, Baltimore, Milwaukee, and dozens of other locations around the country. A recent volume, Nurturing Young Black Males, published by the Urban Institute, suggests a particularly rich flowering of these efforts in the African-American community, sponsored by church groups, fraternities, sororities, and networks like Concerned Black Men and One Hundred Black Men.
We also now have powerful evidence that mentoring works. In 1992, the organisation for which we work, Public/Private Ventures, undertook an independent evaluation of Big Brothers/Big Sisters. (Public/Private Ventures is a non-profit social policy development and evaluation firm in Philadelphia that focuses much of its work on youth and young adults; the evaluation of Big Brothers/Big Sisters was financed by the Pew Charitable Trusts, Commonwealth Fund, Lilly Endowment, and an anonymous donor.) Half a group of young people, randomly chosen, were matched with a Big Brother or Big Sister, while the rest stayed on the waiting list. 18 months later, the differences between the two groups were dramatic. The involvement of a Big Brother or Big Sister in a young person's life for a single year reduced first-time drug use by 46 per cent (at a time when drug use is mounting among teenagers), cut school absenteeism by 52 per cent, and lowered violent behaviour by 33 per cent. Youth with a Big Brother or Big Sister were more likely to perform well in school, much more likely to relate well to family and friends, less likely to assault somebody, and much less likely to start using alcohol. The effects were sustained for both boys and girls and across races.
'The involvement of a Big Brother reduced first-time drug use by 46 per cent'Though some Americans would like to believe that doing good springs simply from the heart, the Big Brother/Big Sister experience suggests that, at least in the case of mentoring, making a genuine difference requires a great deal more. It takes persistent, consistent involvement, and that necessitates substantial care in recruiting, screening, matching, and supporting the volunteers. Paid caseworkers carry out these critical functions for Big Brothers/Big Sisters; as a result, the programme costs on average $1,000 per year per match.
Facing shortages of volunteers and dollars, Big Brothers/Big Sisters programmes across the country are busy innovating and adapting. They are trying to recruit more older adults as mentors. They now involve high school students as "Bigs" and work with schools and other partners in an attempt to lower supervisory costs. Indeed, this willingness to adapt is what separates Big Brothers/Big Sisters from many civic organisations that have become passé. Still, these measures are insufficient.
Until we accept the integral role of the public sector in scaling up effective private initiatives, the potential of mentoring will remain unfulfilled. Unfortunately, for some time public debate has been marooned over ideological opposition between voluntary action and public involvement.
Nevertheless, there are hopeful signs. For instance, Republican Governor Pete Wilson of California has proposed putting $15 million in state funding directly into local mentoring programs to address teenage alcohol and drug abuse, pregnancy, violence, and school failure.
We need to expand the number of paid youth workers available to connect with children, as mentors, in the hours kids spend outside of school. In this vein, David Liederman, director of the Child Welfare League of America, urges establishment of a corps of inner-city youth workers, "able to hit the streets and work directly with kids in their own neighbourhoods." He argues that these are the role models kids really need - not famous athletes on television, but caring adults they can "see, touch, and talk to." Hugh Price of the National Urban League estimates that we could support 500,000 such youth workers for the crucial afternoon and early evening hours for the price of the 100,000 new cops.
In fact, this vision of a 'small army' of adults committed to youth is being partly realised through national service, another example of the role that public policy can play in rebuilding the social capital available to kids. A significant portion of the 20,000 national service participants in AmeriCorps are working in direct and intensive one-to-one roles with youth, many of them helping to expand grassroots mentoring projects.
Friends of the Children in Portland, Oregon, offers a compelling example. Created by a local financier, the program employs "full-time caring, loving adults" who each work intensively with eight young children identified by teachers as destined for trouble. The adult Friends spend time in the classroom, serve as a bridge between school and home, and act like surrogate family to the kids. Their goal is to stick with them from second grade to high school. Until last year, however, budget restrictions limited this promising program to four adult friends. With AmeriCorps dollars, Friends of the Children has moved from a complement of four to a corps of 24 mentors, and the number of children served has increased dramatically.
The Foster Grandparent Program, a little-known product of the War on Poverty that is now run by the Corporation for National Service, is another potential platoon in this much-needed army. Foster Grandparents work one-on-one with 90,000 children a year, making it the biggest one-to-one program in the US, bigger even than Big Brothers/Big Sisters. These Grandparents are low-income women and men over the age of 60 who serve 20 hours a week in schools, Head Start centres, and youth organisations for a stipend of about $200 a month.
'Foster Grandparents maintain relationships with as many as ten children each'As with Friends of the Children and other youth workers, Foster Grandparents are able to maintain relationships with as many as ten children each, providing consistent, weekly (if not daily) attention, while dramatically expanding the number of young people that can be served. At this ratio, 500,000 youth workers might eventually be able to reach as many as five million young people at a level of intensity equivalent to that provided by Big Brothers and Big Sisters.
Ultimately, this approach suggests a new approach to schools and youth programmes. We need to fill these places with interested adults - not only with volunteer mentors, but also with youth workers, teachers, coaches, counsellors, and others with the time and inclination to establish close ties with young people. Young people in these settings would find ample opportunities to develop natural connections.
At a time when statistics no longer shock, mentors are brought face-to-face with the unfair impact of poverty on innocent children. Many wonder how their own children would fare under such circumstances. This education can build not only empathy, but also advocacy. In other words, mentoring can be every bit as much a social programme for adults as for kids, a vehicle for developing their civic instincts while building bridges between communities.
An example of a mentoring project in the UK is the Get It Sorted Project, Cutteslowe Community Centre, Wren Road, Cutteslowe, Oxford OX2 7SX (tel 01865 311172). They seek volunteers who can commit themselves to a minimum of one year, being paired to a young person 'at risk' aged 10 to 16 living on the Templar Road estate.
Mentoring schemes in the UK are due to be co-ordinated by the Divert Trust, 33 King Street, London WC2E 8JD (tel 020 7 379 6171; fax 020 7 240 2082).
The small UK mentoring movement - where an adult befriends and 'adopts' a young person, often one who might otherwise get into trouble - could learn from the massive programmes in the States. The following are summarised from an article entitled 'Social Change One on One' by Gary Walker and Marc Freedman in The American
Prospect (No. 27, July '96; e-mail: prospect@epn.org;
for the complete text see the web at : http://epn.org/prospect/27/27gwal.html).
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