iMentor’s mission is to improve the lives of young people from under-served communities through innovative, technology-based approaches to youth mentoring and education.
What iMentor.org does
- Mentoring relationships. iMentor connects high school students one-to-one with volunteer adult mentors, often from dramatically different New York City experiences. Once matched, mentor-mentee pairs cultivate relationships using a potent combination of weekly email correspondence and face-to-face meetings (iMentor offers 40 mentor-mentee events annually).
- Literacy skills. iMentor connects students to free technology, technology training, and email accounts. This creates a flexible and substantive way for mentors and mentees to communicate while simultaneously developing technological-literacy and sharpening mentees’ writing and reading comprehension skills.
- Opportunities. iMentor connects students to opportunities and training that specifically address deficiencies in our partner schools and communities. All mentees are automatically enrolled in iMentor’s Skills for Career Advancement Program, have access to our online resource database (scholarship, internship, career and college information), are invited to special events and guest speaker presentations, and can apply for iMentor-sponsored summer internships.
Why Blue Ridge Supports iMentor.org
By facilitating mentoring relationships with a potent combination of regular e-mail and face-to-face meetings, iMentor has the possibility:
- To demonstrate that regular communication via email along with less frequent face-to-face meetings achieves the same benefits as traditional mentoring;
- To dramatically increase the number of busy professionals willing to volunteer as mentors and thus the number of young people able to benefit from mentoring relationships;
- To extend opportunities for mentorship to young people living in particularly isolated communities where few mentors are willing to travel on a regular basis;
- To develop technology literacy skills among low-income youth and reduce the effects of the “digital divide” on participating students.
Funding
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| Cash Grants from Blue Ridge |
$350,000** |
$275,000** |
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** Plus in-kind support associated with being housed within Blue Ridge offices
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