January's National Mentoring Month celebrated with Mass Mentoring and the business community
Mayor Martin J. Walsh today joined business leaders from across the city and representatives from MassMentoring Partnership to celebrate the significant progress made in the Mayor's goal of recruiting 1,000 new mentors over the course of two years.
Mayor Martin J. Walsh today joined business leaders from across the city and representatives from MassMentoring Partnership to celebrate the significant progress made in the Mayor's goal of recruiting 1,000 new mentors over the course of two years. The effort recently passed the halfway mark and 563 mentors have been recruited and matched with mentees to date. Today's event is part of a celebration of January's National Mentoring Month.
"I am thankful to all of Boston's professionals who answered the call to connect our City youth with positive mentoring-based relationships," said Mayor Walsh. "Each and every single mentor is making a difference in the lives of young people across the City of Boston. There are many more children waiting to be matched with mentors, and I encourage Boston professionals to sign-up. We will continue to work together to build even more empowering adult-youth relationships here in Boston, and making sure all of our young people have access to this support system."
"The Mayor's commitment to the Mayor's Mentoring Movement means that more young people in Boston have caring adults in their lives," said MassMentoring Partnership President and CEO Marty Martinez. "We were pleased to have the Mayor at the Summit and to be able to connect corporate leaders in the City to this important work."
The event also featured a dialogue on the My Brother's Keeper initiative and related work that's happening in Boston and the central role that youth-adult relationships are playing in these efforts. In December, Boston ranked 6th out of 50 cities across the country based on its high level of engagement and committed action in helping Black men and boys achieve and reach their full potential. The ranking was produced by the Campaign for Black Male Achievement, and published in their report: The Promise of Place: Cities Advancing Black Male Achievement. MBK Boston focuses on improving life outcomes for all youth, especially Black and Latino boys and young men. Attendees heard from representatives of several youth-serving organizations about how the initiative is working to connect young people of color to greater opportunities.
The following six businesses were honored and added to Mass MentoringPartnership's Corporate Mentoring Honor Roll for their commitment to supporting empowering youth-adult relationships:
- The Boston Herald
- Ernst & Young
- Gilbane
- Hill Holliday
- LPL Financial
- Loomis, Sayles & Company
Bank of America was presented with the Ignite Award at the event, an annual award given to a company for their innovative work in growing the field ofmentoring. Bank of America has been a longtime supporter of mentoring and empowering youth-adult relationships. They give financial support to numerousmentoring and youth-serving organizations across the state by sponsoring events, conferences, and trainings and providing programmatic support.
For more information about the initiative, or to sign up to become a mentorplease visit: www.bostonmentors.org.
About Mass Mentoring Partnership
Mass Mentoring Partnership (MMP) is fueling the movement to expand empowering youth-adult relationships across Massachusetts. MMP serves more than 250 programs statewide supporting over 33,000 youth in quality relationships. We work with mentoring programs and youth development organizations to assess programmatic needs and organizational capacity to provide customized strategies that strengthen youth, families, and communities. For more information, please visit: www.massmentors.org
