Mentoring USA

Mentoring USA's mission is to create positive and supportive mentor relationships for youth ages 7-21, through a structured site-based model.

Mentoring USA believes that the presence of a caring adult in a young person's life increases self-esteem, strengthens relationships with peers and adults, improves academic performance and attendance, and helps combat school drop-out. Research increasingly indicates that children who succeed, despite often enormous personal, economic or social obstacles, do so because of caring, competent adults who believe in them. Mentoring outcomes are reciprocal: mentors attest to enhanced self image and self esteem, fulfilling expression of personal values and accrue cultural capital and a diverse perspective.

Mentoring USA is a structured, site-based, mentoring organization that began as the first state-sponsored, school-based, one-on-one mentoring program in the country in 1987. The program founded by former First Lady of the State of New York, Matilda Raffa Cuomo, became a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in 1995, and has provided mentors for more than 5,000 children since its inception and serves youth nationally and internationally.