Companies at the center of the youth mentoring movement have a chance to increase their impact and elevate their social responsibility through the newly re-launched National Corporate Mentoring Honor Roll. Led by MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership, the unifying champion for quality youth mentoring nationwide, the National Corporate Mentoring Honor Roll promotes and recognizes broad-based private-sector engagement and support of quality youth mentoring. Registration for the Honor Roll is now open.

Companies supporting mentoring in any way are eligible and encouraged to register. Honor Roll companies recognize that mentoring is a key strategy to connecting youth to social and economic opportunities while building a strong 21^st century workforce.

By joining the Honor Roll, companies will not only receive national recognition of their efforts, they will also have the exclusive opportunity to spotlight employees that mentor youth by nominating them for the Corporate Excellence in Youth Mentoring Award. MENTOR will recognize 10 national employee mentor honorees, one of whom will be selected to receive the new Corporate Excellence in Youth Mentoring Award at the National Mentoring Summit in January 2018, the annual event convening nearly 1,000 experts, practitioners, advocates, and corporations to advance mentoring nationwide.

To kick off the inaugural year of the Corporate Excellence in Youth Mentoring Award, The Alper Family Foundation will be providing each of the nine national honorees a grant for $500 and the national award winner a grant for $1000 to support the 501c3 mentoring programs where they volunteer.

All Honor Roll companies will receive access to the latest mentoring research, effective mentoring practices, tools and resources to support corporate mentoring initiatives as well as networking opportunities with other corporations, philanthropic investors in mentoring, MENTOR Affiliates, and mentoring programs. Members will also have the opportunity to be spotlighted at conferences, Congressional briefings, and in mentoring field guides and expert research as models for how companies are making change through mentoring.

"When the nonprofit sector and private-sector companies come together to impact change for young people, the results are boundless," said David Shapiro, CEO of MENTOR. "The National Corporate Mentoring Honor Roll and the new Corporate Excellence in Youth Mentoring Award recognize and reflect the breadth and depth of companies stepping up to place mentoring at the center of their social responsibility and talent work – and who are changing lives in the process."

“It is critically important that we close the skills gap in America,” states Patty Alper, author of Teach to Work: How a Mentor, a Mentee and a Project Can Close the Skills Gap in America. “MENTOR’s work with companies to expand corporate mentoring initiatives – to connect employee mentors with youth -- is aligned with the mission of The Alper Family Foundation. As a trustee of the Foundation, I am delighted to partner with MENTOR in recognizing employee mentors with the new Corporate Excellence in Youth Mentoring Award.”

The Honor Roll was launched as the Corporate Mentoring Challenge Honor Roll in 2011 by First Lady Michelle Obama in partnership with MENTOR at the National Mentoring Summit. The White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships and the Corporation for National and Community Service were supporters of the Corporate Mentoring Challenge under President Obama’s administration.

The deadline to register for the 2018 Honor Roll is October 27, 2017. The deadline for nominating employee mentors for the Corporate Excellence in Youth Mentoring Award is November 2, 2017. 

About MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership
MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership is the unifying champion for quality youth mentoring in the United States. MENTOR’s mission is to close the mentoring gap and ensure our nation’s young people have the support they need through quality mentoring relationships to succeed at home, school, and ultimately, work. To achieve this, MENTOR collaborates with its network of Affiliates and works to drive the investment of time and money into high-impact mentoring programs and advance quality mentoring through the development and delivery of standards, cutting-edge research, and state-of-the-art tools. Connect with MENTOR on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

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MENTOR

MENTOR

MENTOR is the unifying champion for expanding the quality and quantity of mentoring relationships across the United States. 30 years ago, MENTOR was created to expand  opportunities for young people by building a youth mentoring field and movement. The result: a more than 10-fold increase in young people in structured mentoring relationships. Today, MENTOR is the expert voice representing a movement that meets young people everywhere they are – from schools, to workplaces, and beyond. MENTOR operates in collaboration with 25 local Affiliates across the country. For more information, visit mentoring.org.

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