Benefits to Community

Society also benefits when mentors work with mentees. Mentoring can create a common fabric in communities, creating connections between adults and youth who may not normally come into contact with each other. These connections, created through youth mentoring, help to create a unified, understanding community.

Youth mentoring gives many members of the community involvement in future leaders of the community. Support for a coordinated, public response to the out-of-school needs of school-aged youth, for example, is more likely to emerge when mentors see how their protégés' problems multiply during unsupervised hours. In this case, youth mentoring plays a role in garnering support for other youth-development initiatives.

When well-regarded organizations form youth mentoring partnerships, it sends a clear message and brings credibility for public support of youth mentors and youth mentoring organizations. In this sense, successful mentoring plays a role as a gateway toward the public's expanding commitment to youth policies, programs and institutions.