College Community Mentoring Project

Communities for Children and Youth is partnering with and supporting six Colleges in Maine as they both expand and create new school-based mentoring programs for at-risk children and youth in their surrounding, disadvantaged communities.

Bowdoin College, the University of New England, the University of Maine at Orono, the University of Maine at Augusta, the University of Southern Maine in Portland, and the University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn College in Lewiston will be partnering with their surrounding public schools and their most effective local community-based organizations, including Big Brothers Big Sisters, the York County Community Action Agency, the River Coalition, the Augusta Boys and Girls Club for Teens, and THRIVE (a trauma-informed system of care).

The mentoring model these colleges will be replicating has been developed by Colby College, Colby Cares About Kids: a 1:1, school-based mentoring program that matches a well-trained and supported college student with a mentee for one to four years. Each college will recruit at least 25 new mentors each year for three years, serving 450 elementary, middle and early high school youth who have been referred by a guidance counselor or teacher.

The mentors will receive training in evidence-based mentoring practices, as well as positive youth development approaches and activities, and the unique needs of youth who are first time offenders, in order to help them increase their pro-social behavior, academic success and aspirations for higher education.

This College Community Mentoring Project will be developed over the next three years at an overall project cost of $1,111 per mentor match, which includes a published evaluation report and replication manual.