Today's post is written by Kathy Witkowicki, the Founder and Executive Director of the Sonoma Valley Mentoring Alliance, a non-profit organization that provides one-on-one mentoring for at-risk youth in Sonoma, California. Over the past 16 years, the program has served more than 1,500 kids by matching them with long-term, committed volunteer mentors. 

Deciding to become a mentor is a good resolution to make any time, but it’s especially important now. The need is large and growing, particularly when it comes to at-risk kids, which is my area of mentoring.  While three million youth nationwide have mentors, another 15 million need a stable and caring adult presence in their lives.

So give some thought to making a resolution to help an at-risk youth in the coming year. And while I hope you do, I also want to offer this advice: approach it with real commitment.

It may seem counter-intuitive for a mentoring advocate to offer cautions about becoming a mentor, but I’ve learned that being honest about what is truly required best serves all concerned.

Understandably, prospective mentors tend to focus on the emotional benefits of mentoring, which are considerable. But successful mentoring also requires knowing that the relationship is driven by the needs of the child and not the expectations of the mentor. It’s true that mentoring can help to change a life for the better, but it’s not a quick fix.

Studies show that the secret sauce for mentoring success is time. The longer a mentoring relationship lasts, the better for the youth involved.

A paper published by the American Journal of Community Psychology in 2011 noted that youth gain the greatest benefits from mentoring relationships that last a year or longer, and that brief mentoring relationships that end prematurely have little or no value and may even be harmful.

That’s why in our program we look for long-term commitment, asking prospective mentors to think in terms of years, not months.

While this places a responsibility on mentors, it places an even greater obligation on mentoring organizations like mine to do their part.  So choose an organization that can provide the support you need to stay the course. Here are a few questions to ask:

• Will they spend enough time initially to get to know you so they can carefully match you with a child who has a compatible personality and interests?
• Do they help you structure your time with the child, whether at school or after-school, through planned activities and events?
• Do they provide services and support throughout the mentoring relationship so you have someone to turn to for advice and counsel when you have questions or hit the inevitable rough patches?

We have found that by being attentive to these concerns in our K-12 program, magic can, and often does, happen. Among recent high school seniors in our program, eight in ten have had the support of a mentor for at least six years, and half have had a mentor for eight years or more. Most importantly, these young men and women, who were at higher risk of dropping out, are graduating in numbers equal to their peers and moving on to college at a comparable rate.

So as you think about your resolutions for 2013, consider the rewards that come from mentoring an at-risk youth.

You can locate a program in your community by visiting The National Mentoring Partnership’s website.