Handouts from Mentoring for Meaningful Results
The Search Institute, whose 40 Developmental Assets have formed a key component of most youth work today, have made several sections and handouts from their widely acclaimed Mentoring for Meaningful Results guidebook available. These can easily be incorporated into mentor or parent orientations:
   ~ What Is My Role as a Mentor?
   ~ My Mentor’s Role in My Life
   ~ Setting and Reaching Goals
   ~ Supporting Your Child’s Relationship with a Mentor

Performance Measurement Packet for Youth Mentoring Programs
This new resource from Project STAR, the evaluation training and assistance provider for the Corporation for National and Community Service, provides mentoring programs with a nice set of evaluation instruments and scoring sheets for measuring how mentors, mentees, and parents feel about the match and what mentees think of themselves and their future. The surveys, originally designed for Children of Prisoner programs but certainly applicable to any youth mentoring effort, have been field tested for validity. The packet even includes instructions for writing up the evaluation results in a way that will be useful to funders and partner organizations. The packet, and accompanying scoring sheets, can be downloaded from the Corporation's Resource Center at:
http://www.nationalserviceresources.org/resources/
online_pubs/perf_meas/ac_home.php

Youth in Foster Care With Adult Mentors During Adolescence Have Improved Adult Outcomes
This interesting new piece of research examines the long-term outcomes of foster youth who had, or did not have, a natural mentor in their lives as adolescents. Drawing from data in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the authors find that foster youth who had mentors had more positive outcomes in a number of key areas as adults, including health and educational success. Although centered around naturally-formed mentoring relationships, this research indicates that close non-parent adult mentoring relationships may be a key strategy for supporting foster youth.
view the report online: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/
reprint/peds.2007-0508v1.pdf

Research in Action Series
MENTOR has announced the release of a new series that translates the latest scholarly research on mentoring into tangible strategies for mentoring practitioners. This groundbreaking series makes the best available research accessible and relevant to practitioners, policymakers, and funders alike. The entire series of publications can be downloaded on the MENTOR Web site at: http://www.mentoring.org/access_research/
research_in_action/research_in_action_series/