Fans Commit to Mentoring Through the Coaches’ Mentoring Challenge

By: MENTOR

Campaigns

BigTenFollowing an impressive final quarter, MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership (MENTOR) is thrilled to announce that 9,289 fans have committed to support the next generation of students and alumni by becoming mentors to young people.

With help from members of the Big Ten Conference and football coaches at the conference’s 14 universities, and with additional support from members of the Big 12 and other conferences, MENTOR and local nonprofit partners across the country launched the 2015 Coaches’ Mentoring Challenge as part of an effort to increase participation in youth mentoring programs across the country.

An annual campaign that began with Coach Tom Osborne at the University of Nebraska and Coach Bill Snyder at Kansas State in 2008, the Coaches’ Mentoring Challenge is a friendly competition among coaches and between states with a shared goal to connect more caring adults and young people through quality mentoring relationships.

As described in MENTOR’s recent report informed by the first nationally representative survey of young people on the topic of mentoring, The Mentoring Effect, mentors can improve academic, social and economic prospects for America’s young people.  This in turn strengthens teams, campuses and all of our communities.

Mentored youth set higher educational goals and are 55 percent more likely to attend college than those without a mentor.  These young people are more likely to participate in extracurricular activities, hold leadership positions, and often possess higher levels of confidence necessary to succeed in school or at work, according to the report.

“The Coaches’ Mentoring Challenge is a unique opportunity for fans to get involved in the youth mentoring movement.  The campaign’s success is due in no small part to the conference partnerships and hard work and dedication from each coach, player and fan,” said MENTOR President and CEO David Shapiro.

“The support from those involved in this year’s Challenge has brought us one step closer to closing the mentoring gap, and we are exceptionally grateful to all who took action.”

MENTOR would like to thank our campaign partners and all those involved for their participation and demonstrated commitment to helping advance the mentoring movement and close the mentoring gap.

 

About MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership

MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership is the unifying champion for quality youth mentoring in the United States. MENTOR’s mission is to close the “mentoring gap” and ensure young people have the support they need through quality mentoring relationships to succeed at home, school, and ultimately, work. To achieve this, MENTOR collaborates with its network of affiliate Mentoring Partnerships and works to drive the investment of time and money into high impact mentoring programs and advance quality mentoring through the development and delivery of standards, cutting-edge research and state-of-the-art tools. Additional information about MENTOR is available at https://www.mentoring.org/.

About the Big Ten Conference

The Big Ten Conference is an association of world-class universities whose member institutions share a common mission of research, graduate, professional and undergraduate teaching and public service. Founded in 1896, the Big Ten has sustained a comprehensive set of shared practices and policies that enforce the priority of academics in the lives of students competing in intercollegiate athletics and emphasize the values of integrity, fairness and competitiveness. The broad-based programs of the 14 Big Ten institutions  will provide over $200 million in direct financial support to almost 9,500 students for more than 11,000 participation opportunities on 350 teams in 42 different sports. The Big Ten sponsors 28 official conference sports, 14 for men and 14 for women, including the addition of men’s ice hockey and men’s and women’s lacrosse since 2013. For more information, visit www.bigten.org.

Contacts

MENTOR: Diane Quest | dquest@mentoring.org | 617-303-4609
Big Ten Conference:  Scott Chipman | schipman@bigten.org | 847-696-1010

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  • MENTOR National and Affiliates will use the information you provide to better inform future publications and keep you up to date with advancements in the mentoring field. For more information, check out our privacy policy.