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Home > START A PROGRAM > Management > Advocating for Mentoring >

Advocating for Mentoring

To sustain momentum for the mentoring movement, every mentoring program should serve as an advocate for mentoring at the local, state and federal levels.

How do I start advocating?

Don't be afraid to talk with your legislators about your mentoring program. You may have heard the saying, "All politics is local." It's true-legislators need election votes and, therefore, they must act on issues that are important to their constituents.

The most important thing is to build a relationship with your legislators and their key staff members by familiarizing them with your program, its impact on the community and the challenges you face. You will benefit, and your legislators will appreciate becoming more informed and having a trusted resource on mentoring. Consider using these methods to build those relationships with legislators at the federal, state, and local levels:

• Send letters to your legislators on issues of concern, and thank them if they help out;
  
• Attend town hall meetings or other events where your legislators will be present, and introduce yourself;
• Meet with staff in legislators' district offices;
  
• Send updates on your program to legislators; and
• Invite legislators to events that showcase your program and how it affects the community.
  

When possible, partner with your State and Local Mentoring Partnership on their advocacy efforts, as one of their primary roles is to encourage decision makers to adopt pro-mentoring policies and legislation. A strong advocacy effort will pay off in mentoring friendly public policies and greater amounts of public funding for mentoring.

Also, learn more about becoming an advocate for mentoring in our advocacy section. This section provides information about critical public policy issues facing mentoring and gives you an opportunity to contact your members of Congress. We encourage you take the first step in becoming a mentoring advocate by joining our Advocacy Network to receive email updates on mentoring issues.

(This section is excerpted from How to Build a Successful Mentoring Program Using the Elements of Effective Practice, Section V. How to Manage a Program for Success.)

Advocacy Resources

Additional information, resources and tools are available in the Find Resources section and in the How to Build a Successful Mentoring Program Using the Elements of Effective Practice Toolkit.