Human Services News

Public/Private Ventures:

In 1995, P/PV released findings from an impact study of the Big Brothers Big Sisters community-based mentoring program; the evaluation results provided some of the first rigorous evidence that well-implemented mentoring programs could yield significant benefits for youth. In the years since, as the mentoring field has grown and diversified, school-based mentoring—a variation on the community-based model in which youth and mentors meet on school grounds—has become one of the most popular forms of mentoring in the US, serving almost 870,000 youth nationwide.

Although it shares many features of community-based mentoring, differences in both context and duration suggested to researchers and program planners that its impacts might also be distinct. Therefore, in 2003, in collaboration with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA), and with funding from The Atlantic Philanthropies, Philip Morris USA and The William T. Grant Foundation, P/PV began the first large-scale, national random assignment evaluation of the BBBS School-Based Mentoring program. Making a Difference in Schools and its accompanying executive summary present findings from this evaluation.

The impacts found in the first year of the study highlight the promise of this program model, showing improvements across a range of academic attitudes, performance and behaviors. Yet, findings also point to several practices that need strengthening if school-based mentoring is to reach its potential. The report examines the program's impacts, infrastructure and costs and considers ways that practitioners can structure programs to help strengthen matches and benefits for youth. A BBBS task force has developed recommendations for strengthening the school-based mentoring model that are very much aligned with P/PV's findings, and agencies are moving quickly to implement these recommendations.