The Need

The benefits of mentoring are well documented, but the mentoring community still suffers from a large mentoring gap, millions of young people in need of mentoring who are not receiving mentors. While over 3 million adults are currently serving as mentors in America, over 44 million adults who said they would consider mentoring are not volunteering.

Traditional Mentoring Model  |   iMentor's Response   |   NYC Impact

Traditional Mentoring Model: The Limitations

The traditional mentoring model asks mentors to make regular visits to their mentee’s home community. iMentor believed that this mentoring model ruled out thousands of potential volunteers who did not feel they had the flexibility in their schedule to make this kind of commitment. Secondly, the traditional model makes it difficult for mentoring programs to thrive in the most underserved and isolated communities, the same communities that could benefit the most from mentoring. A new mentoring model was needed.

iMentor's Response: A New Kind of Mentoring Model

iMentor began creating this model when it launched in 1999 and refined and evaluated the model. iMentor activates a previously untapped pool of volunteer mentors (70% have never mentored before / 84% have never mentored in NYC) and connects them to youth with little or no access to mentoring (98% have never had a mentor before enrolling in the program). Program evaluations show iMentor mentoring relationships showcase the same positive impact as traditional mentoring programs, with added benefits around iMentor’s core impact areas (personal, academic and career success). iMentor works.

NYC Impact

New York City is a city composed of eclectic neighborhoods. These neighborhoods vary dramatically in terms of income, education, and access to opportunity, creating strong correlations between the communities in which youth live and the lives they go on to lead. Education and job-readiness are two major factors that tie some of the city’s communities to decades of poverty while other communities, in others parts of the city, continue to prosper. iMentor uses mentoring to close this gap, creating connections that would not have been possible without the program, diversifying mentee experience to ignite ambition and empowering youth with the skills critical to personal, academic, and career success.