Mentor Illinois

MENTOR Illinois is the unifying champion for quality youth mentoring in Illinois, providing resources, expert consultation, heightened public awareness and advocacy for the state's mentoring movement. MENTOR Illinois, headquartered in Chicago, is dedicated to improving and expanding high-quality youth mentoring across our state. We build the capacity and effectiveness of more than 400 youth mentoring programs - both emerging and existing organizations - to ensure their operations meet national best practice standards. Through public awareness and targeted recruitment efforts, we also help youth mentoring organizations find the mentors and financial support they need to serve the many children in need in their communities. MENTOR Illinois also provides extensive training, quality assessment and technical assistance to ensure that programs across the state employ evidence-based standards. In addition, we serve as the statewide clearinghouse for mentoring data, tools, research and evidence-based benchmarks – essential information for funders, program staff and mentors. MENTOR Illinois is one of 28 state affiliates of MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership.