A Description of a Mentor Program

In the face of growing disintegration of traditional institutions such as families, churches and community networks, mentoring has emerged as an alternative and inexpensive solution for helping young students (Mejorado). Mentors provide academic assistance and expose at-risk children to positive activities in order to motivate them to succeed at school ("Mentors," 1996, p. 21). The Governor's Academic Volunteer and Mentor Service Program (AVMSP) of California is one of the many programs that have sprung up to enable schools to offer mentors to at-risk students. Every year, the Office of the Secretary for Education (OSE) that runs AVMSP metes out ten million dollars in local assistance grants for recruitment of mentors in various schools. Thus far, this program has providing funding to more than 145 school-based mentor programs in California. Seventeen thousand mentors help around 15,000 to 20,000 students every year (OSE, 2000).

Although the concept of mentoring seems appealing as a cost-efficient strategy, it also involves a labor-intensive and time-consuming process of recruiting, training, matching and supervision of the mentors and mentees. Each step of the process is fraught with problems. Apart from the difficulty of recruiting committed mentors

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chool-based mentoring programs. Currently, 111 grants have been offered to 319 schools in California. Each year, ten million dollars in grants are allocated for the purpose of funding school-based mentoring programs. Governor Gray Davis has proposed an additional $5 million for joint efforts between higher education institutions and K-12 schools in his 2000-1 Budget (Burr, 2000, p. 1). The AVMSP funding enables schools to implement the process of recruiting and training mentors that require investment in money and time. At-risk students who would have been abandoned by overworked teachers dealing with a large class would have an opportunity to succeed in class. The AVMSP is administered by the Governor's OSE. OSE is responsible for choosing grantees and allocating funds in a competitive application process (Burr, 2000, p. 3). Applicants need to provide a funding proposal that describes their "need for an academic mentoring program in a school environment" (OSE, 2000). Furthermore, applicants must show that they are capable of complying with the ten AVMSP Program Quality Standards required for the implementation of the mentoring program. The OSE also monitors the progress of the mentoring programs through quarterly and annual rep
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