Our vision is that all children achieve success in life. Our mission is to provide children facing adversity with strong and enduring, professionally supported 1-to-1 relationships that change their lives for the better, forever.   We partner with parents/guardians, volunteers and others in the community and hold ourselves accountable for each child in our program to achieve higher aspirations, greater confidence, and better relationships, avoid risky behaviors, and educational success.

We served 316 youth in CY 2010, of which 70% were community-based matches where the Big (mentor) and Little (mentee) spend about 12 hours a month together doing fun, trust-building activities.  The remaining 30% were school-based matches that meet on-site for an hour a week.  The majority of these are High School Bigs, where high school students mentor elementary school students.   We transitioned to a new pre and post Youth Outcome Survey this past year.  It measures school competency, grades, educational expectations, social skills and relationships, attitudes toward risky behavior, school attendance, parental trust and having a caring adult in their lives.  While initial results are not yet statistically valid, they are certainly promising.  Community based matches show 80% or more improve in four outcome areas and school-based matches show 80% or more improve  in two outcome areas.  The increase in educational expectation that they will finish high school jumps significantly after one year matched with a caring mentor.