What is Involved

• Mentors spend time with children on a regular basis, often at the child's school. Mentoring programs usually require the mentor to commit to the relationship for an extended period of time, which can be a year at the minimum, but is often expected to be the child's entire time in high school. Stability and consistency are considered to be central to the mentoring relationship. If you cannot commit to meeting with your mentee for at least an hour every other week, then you should not volunteer to be a mentor. It is preferable to meet with the child at least once a week.
  
  

Qualities of a Mentor

• The most important quality in a mentor is to be a positive role model and a good influence on the child's life, as this is the purpose of the mentoring program. Good mentors are able to listen patiently, and they don't get frustrated too quickly or expect the child to have a major breakthrough overnight. Mentoring programs generally do not accept volunteers with criminal records, or those who abuse drugs or alcohol. Mentors are also expected to consistently show up on time.
  
  

Goals of Mentoring

• Mentoring programs are intended to help children become more self-confident, successful and responsible. For this reason, mentoring programs prefer volunteers who also have these qualities and can model them for the child. Mentors are frequently recruited from the corporate world or from religious programs. Most mentoring programs are focused on children who are seen as being at-risk for some reason. For example, Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America concentrates on children from single-parent households.
  
  

Expectations

• If you're considering becoming a mentor, you should make sure to have realistic expectations. As a volunteer mentor, you cannot expect to become a substitute parent, or to be able to cause a rapid turnaround in the child's life. Many of the children in a mentoring program will have self-esteem issues and other problems, which are often too complex for simple solutions. As a mentor, you can be a good influence on the child, but you cannot fix everything that might be wrong in the child's life.