Mission & Vision

Mission

The Mission of Upstanding Citizens is to transform the lives of at-risk youth by creating meaningful connections with mentors that will participate in their academic, social, and emotional growth. In addition, we strive to provide youth with the school resources necessary to achieve academic success.

Vision

Our Vision is the creation of safe and supportive communities that guide youth members towards building knowledge, confidence, character, and skills, so they may fulfill their passion and purpose.

Why Mentoring Works

Academic Achievement

"High levels of absenteeism is one of the early warning indicators that a student may be falling off-track" (Kennelly & Monrad, 2007)

The NYC Task Force on Chronic Absenteeism tackled several strategies to improve attendance at task force schools and the single most effective action was creating mentor partnerships to provide the social emotional learning necessary to promote education. The attendance of some students with mentors rose an entire month, even students in homeless shelters saw improvements – they were 31% less likely to be chronically absent. The battle to fight Chronic Absenteeism has been taken up nationally and the White House is encouraging youth-serving organizations to take on this challenge and move the needle on school attendance and graduation.

DAILY LIFE

By being a consistent adult presence in a young person’s life, mentors can offer advice, share life their experiences, and help a young person navigate challenges. A study showed that the strongest benefit from mentoring, and most consistent across risk groups, was a reduction in depressive symptoms — particularly noteworthy given that almost one in four youth reported worrisome levels of these symptoms at baseline. (The Role of Risk, 2013)

Mentoring also promotes positive social attitudes and relationships. Mentored youth tend to trust their parents more and communicate better with them. (The Role of Risk, 2013)

CAREER

One study estimates that the human potential lost as a result of the educational achievement gap is the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession. By preparing young people for college and careers, mentoring helps develop the future workplace talent pipeline (Mentoring: At the crossroads of education, business and community, 2015). Mentors can also prepare their mentees for professional careers and assist with their workplace skills by:

Helping set career goals and taking the steps to realize them.
Using personal contacts to help young people network with industry professionals, find internships, and locate possible jobs.
Introduce young people to resources and organizations they may not be familiar with.
Skills for seeking a job, interviewing for a job, and keeping a job.

OUR EQUITY AND INCLUSION STATEMENT

Upstanding Citizens inclusive culture empowers all of us—students, volunteers, staff, and board of directors—to connect in authentic ways to fight all forms of bias and racism, promote belonging, and build community. We advance diversity and equity in all aspects of our work in order to enrich and strengthen our programs and impact. Our commitment and actions will demonstrate to every young person that they are respected and valued.

OUR VALUES

The Potential of Youth: We value the known and hidden potential of youth. Every child deserves an opportunity to achieve the brightest possible future, and a good education and support system is essential.
Ethical Engagement: We are committed to working with honesty, integrity, and a warm heart.
Supportive Relationships: We nurture ongoing relationships between students and caring adults that build on student strengths.
Collaboration: We believe in collaboration, cooperation, and teamwork. We work as partners, colleagues, and team members of school districts and youth-oriented services to help young people achieve their best possible outcomes.
Cultural Sensitivity:

We work to increase our awareness and sensitivity to the cultures of the people who surround us, including our students and their families, our board, our volunteers, and our employees.

How We Assess Program Goals

1. Process Adherence

Basic information is collected such as whether sessions are happening according to plan, the frequency and duration of sessions, and agreed milestones that can predict the likelihood of a successful outcome at the end of a mentoring journey. If the engagement is not progressing, we intervene quickly to diagnose the causes and take appropriate corrective actions.

2. Pulse Checks

We ask mentors & mentees to rate the ease of navigating through the program, describe the challenges they are facing, rate the support resources available and evaluate their comfort with the effectiveness of the program. We ask these questions through quick surveys and outreach. These checks are completed quarterly throughout the course of a mentoring journey and the data points are used to create a scorecard, which is then used as an ongoing update to all stakeholders.

We capture both quantitative and qualitative information in the surveys. The former is useful for analytics and reports, while the latter helps understand issues in depth and helps in problem-solving as well as course correction.

3. The Experience of Mentors and Mentees

It is important to engage separately with mentors and mentees to understand the “on-the-ground” effectiveness of the program. It is important to create a safe space where both mentors and mentees can give honest feedback and discuss their concerns. One-on-one meetings and journaling are private but effective ways to evaluate their perceived value of the program and the level of comfort and trust they experience with their mentoring partner. This feedback can also provide success stories to share across the organization.

4. Mentee Progress

Participants enter into a mentoring relationship with specific predefined goals. The most direct measure of the effectiveness of the program is, therefore, to track the mentee’s progress towards their goals. We create an individual development plan (IDP) at the start of the engagement to help measure progress. An IDP lists the goals of the program and identifies actions needed to take to achieve them, along with timelines and the support required. Tracking progress using the IDP provides valuable data on the impact of the mentoring program and holds all parties accountable.

5. Organizational Outcomes

We evaluate the impact of our entire mentoring program through macro-level organizational outcomes like engagement scores, retention levels, productivity, performance ratings and goal accomplishment rates.

We survey members who completed the mentoring program, members who joined the program but did not complete, and members who inquired, but did not participate at all. These analytical tools help us understand trends in impact and effectiveness of the program across.

6. Program Advocacy

An important indicator that establishes sustainability of the program is advocacy within the organization, measured through data points such as an increase in the number of participants (both mentors and mentees), the number of program referrals from existing participants and the number of mentors who participate in the program more than once. These are important indicators of the program’s sustainability and important inference points about the program’s perceived impact and effectiveness.

Continuously tracking the mentorship program for effectiveness, taking corrective action based on feedback, and sharing outcomes with all stakeholders is critical so that the need and impact of mentoring is understood by all.

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