On February 8, the House approved, by voice vote, a resolution (H. Res. 660) supporting the designation of January 2006 as “National Mentoring Month.”
Sponsored by Rep. Tom Osborne (R-NE), the resolution states that mentoring “helps young people stay in school and improve academically, boosts self-esteem and communication skills, and improves the chances of going on to higher education.” While congratulating those who have served and are serving as mentors, the resolution highlights “a serious mentoring gap, with more than 15 million young people currently in need of caring adult role models.”
Rep. Osborne said, “We have become the most violent Nation in the developed countries for young people, currently leading the world among developed nations in suicide and homicide rates. Certainly drug and alcohol abuse has increased dramatically…A mentor is someone who provides a vision of what might be possible. So mentoring is critical. Mentoring does work.”
Noting that “youth matched in mentoring programs are 46 percent less likely to use illegal drugs and 37 percent less likely to skip a day of class,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) added, “The benefits of mentoring do not stop with the youth. Research by the Commonwealth Fund shows that 83 percent of adult mentors ‘learned or gained something personally from their mentoring experience,’ suggesting that mentoring is a positive experience for both the mentor and the youth.”
