Oregon Mentors History
Oregon Mentors began out of the national youth development campaign—America’s Promise. Led by its chairman, General Colin Powell, America’s Promise—The Alliance for Youth, is dedicated to improving the lives of our nation’s youth. One of the five promises was for each child to have "an ongoing relationship with a caring adult—parent, mentor, tutor or coach." America’s Promise was launched at the Presidents’ Summit for America’s Future in the spring of 1997.
A team of Oregon leaders returned from the summit determined to dramatically expand quality mentoring in our state. They convened a tri-county youth summit of more than 2,000 Oregonians, more than 700 of whom personally made commitments to participate in the initiative. A $10,000 contribution from Duncan and Cindy Campbell provided the funds to retain an Americorps fellow to research the landscape of Oregon’s youth mentoring providers.
Conversations, surveys, and testimony from dozens of provider groups and mentoring experts in Oregon and around the country identified the major barriers to expanding mentoring in Oregon:
- lack of effective volunteer recruitment and referral strategies
- absence of quality assurance standards
- inconsistent mentor training
- lack of technical assistance and best practices
- considerable administrative barriers
Additionally, it was found that only one in seven prospective mentors completed the process to become matched with a young person.
After two years of extensive needs assessment, grass-roots organizing and formal strategic planning, the Oregon Mentoring Initiative (now Oregon Mentors) was launched in January 2001 by a committed group of leaders in business and government, joined by more than fifty mentoring programs.
In direct response to what providers identified, OMI committed to five major goals: creation of a statewide database of programs; recruitment and referral of mentors; delivery of training and technical assistance to mentors and program managers; reduction of barriers to expansion; and increased public awareness of mentoring and mentoring opportunities. Today those five goals have evolved into three core areas of program support.
