Recognizing the effect that mentors have on improving school attendance and academic success, MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership has released a promotional toolkit with mentoring-specific social media messages to be distributed to all campaign convening partners, collaborating partners and supporters. Download it here.

Studies of formal mentoring programs have shown:

• Students who meet regularly with their mentors are 52% less likely than their peers to skip a day of school.
• Students who meet regularly with their mentors are 37% less likely than their peers to skip a class.
• Students at-risk for not graduating were 36% more likely to aspire to enroll in and graduate from college if they had a mentor.
• Youth who had a mentor growing up are 55% more likely to later be enrolled in college.
• Students who have a mentor are 130% more likely to lead in sport/club.

MENTOR is part of the Attendance Awareness Campaign and has designated  the week of September 14, 2015, as The Mentoring Effect & Attendance Week! The goals are to:

• Increase awareness about how quality mentoring can be leveraged as a strategy to improve attendance and thereby improve academic achievement.
• Reach new audiences tracking issues related to education, academic achievement and dropout and graduation rates.