Angels Camp, CA…January is National Mentoring Month, and Calaveras Mentoring is celebrating this annual effort to expand quality mentoring opportunities for young people with proclamations, posters, banners and an information session for potential volunteer mentors. “We are proud to be connected to the mentoring movement nationwide and to celebrate National Mentoring Month in a community that supports mentoring so passionately,” said Kathryn Eustis, founder of the Calaveras Youth Mentoring Program and director of Student Support Services at the Calaveras County Office of Education (CCOE).

The Calaveras Youth Mentoring Program was launched in 2003 as Calaveras County’s only adult-to-youth mentoring program. Since then, CCOE mentoring programs have grown to include Friday Night Live (FNL) Mentoring which matches high school students with middle school students, and group mentoring programs for young adults and foster youth in our county’s Independent Living Program. The nonprofit Calaveras Mentoring Foundation was created in 2011 to raise awareness and support for youth mentoring. Calaveras now also has a thriving Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) program, which provides volunteer advocates for children in foster care and is administered by Nexus Youth and Family Services.

Research shows that mentors play a powerful role in providing young people with the tools to strive and thrive, to attend and engage in school, and to reduce or avoid risky behavior. Nationally, young people with mentors are:
• 55% more likely to be enrolled in college
• 81% more likely to report participating regularly in sports or extracurricular activities
• 78% more likely to volunteer regularly in their communities.
• More than twice as likely to say they held a leadership position in a club or sports team.

Evaluation of the Calaveras Youth Mentoring Program over the past 15 years shows that local youth with mentors measurably improve their self-esteem, sense of the future, relationships with peers and adults, and decision making.

Yet, one in three young people in our country will grow up without a mentor and in our community, there are more than a dozen young people waiting for mentors right now.

The mentoring movement nationwide is poised for growth. Research shows that 44% of adults are not yet mentoring but are willing to consider it. Almost half of today’s young adults report having a mentor in their youth and those rates appear to have been rising steadily over the past several decades.

National Mentoring Month is led by MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership, the national organization working to expand the quality and quantity of youth mentoring relationships nationwide. Each year since its launch in 2002, National Mentoring Month has enjoyed the strong support of the president and the United States Congress.
Calaveras Mentoring will hold information sessions for potential volunteers on January 14th from 10-11am and February 21st from 5:30-6:30pm at the Calaveras County Office of Education. For more information, visit calaverasmentoring.org or call the program at 209-736-6078.

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