Whereas the goals of National Mentoring Month are to raise awareness of and celebrate the powerful impact of mentoring relationships, recruit new mentors, and encourage institutions to integrate quality mentoring into their policies, practices, and programs;

Whereas quality mentoring fosters positive life and social skills, promotes self-esteem, bolsters academic achievement and college access, supports career exploration, and nurtures youth leadership development;

Whereas mentoring happens in many settings, including community-based programs, elementary and secondary schools, colleges, government agencies, religious institutions, youth sports teams, and the workplace, and in various ways, including formal mentoring matches and informal relationships with teachers, coaches, neighbors, faith leaders, and others;

Whereas effective mentoring of underserved and vulnerable populations helps individuals confront challenges and display improved mental health and social-emotional well-being;

Whereas studies have shown that incorporating culture and heritage into mentoring programs can improve academic outcomes and increase community engagement, especially for Alaska Native and American Indian youth;

Whereas mentoring encourages positive youth development and smart daily behaviors, such as finishing homework and having healthy social interactions, and has a positive impact on the growth and success of a young person;

Whereas mentors help young people set career goals and can help connect mentees to industry professionals to train for and find jobs;

Whereas mentoring programs generally have a significant, positive impact on youth academic achievement, school connectedness and engagement, and educational success, which lead to outcomes such as improved attendance, grades, test scores, and classroom behavior;

Whereas research has found that young people facing risk of not completing high school but who had a mentor were, compared with their peers, more likely to enroll in college, to participate regularly in sports or extracurricular activities, to hold a leadership position in a club or sports team, and to volunteer regularly, and less likely to start using drugs;

Whereas mentoring has long been a staple of juvenile justice and violence prevention efforts and can offer comprehensive support to youth at risk for committing violence or victimization, as mentoring can address many risk factors at once;

Whereas mentoring relationships for youth facing risk, such as foster youth, can have a positive impact on a wide range of factors, including mental health, educational functioning and attainment, peer relationships, employment, and housing stability;

Whereas mentoring programs have been found to have a meaningful positive impact on mental health symptoms across a variety of outcomes, including internalizing and externalizing mental health symptoms, interpersonal relationships, and reducing parental stress;

Whereas mentoring is an innovative, evidence-based practice and, uniquely, is both a prevention and intervention strategy that can support young people of all demographics and backgrounds in all aspects of their lives;

Whereas each of the benefits of mentors described in this preamble serves to link youth to economic and social opportunity while also strengthening communities in the United States;

Whereas, despite the benefits of mentoring, 40 percent of young persons are growing up without someone outside of the home to offer real life guidance and support;

Whereas this mentoring gap demonstrates the need for collaboration between the private, public, and nonprofit sectors to increase resources for relationship-centric supports for youth in communities, schools, and workplaces; and

Whereas volunteer mentors report getting as much out of a mentoring relationship as the young person, with 70 percent reporting finding the relationship highly satisfying, 80 percent indicating they plan to continue mentoring, and 76 percent recommend stepping up to be a volunteer mentor to friends and family: Now, therefore, be it