Money Smart Teen Topic

Find a Mentor

Finding a mentor in a life is a wonderful way to have additional people in your life to help you navigate some of life’s challenges and celebrate life’s successes!

According to Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Kansas City, children growing up in one-parent homes experience significant increased risk in areas of education, illegal activity, and suicide. In the Kansas City area, this makes up about 25% of the total number of school-aged youth (approximately 80,000).

Young people who were at-risk for not completing high school but who had a mentor were 55% more likely to be enrolled in college than those who did not have a mentor. They were also:

  • 81% more likely to report participating regularly in sports or extracurricular activities.
  • 78% more likely to volunteer regularly in their communities.
  • More than twice as likely to say they held a leadership position in a club or sports team.

  • 2Connect Mentoring Program – envisions a community in which every youth experiences a one on one relationship to support them in developing their full potential
  • ACE Mentor Program– an after-school program for high school students that gives them a hands-on introduction to careers in architecture, construction management and engineering.
  • Awesome Ambitions– mentoring and college-readiness program for 8th through 12th grade girls in the Kansas City area. Professional women work side by side with our girls to help mentor them on the importance of getting a good education, exploring employment and career options, and learning about financial management, fitness and nutrition, leadership development and other life skills.
  • Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Greater Kansas City–  offers children facing adversity a long-term developmental relationship with a caring adult. Bigs serve as friends, mentors and role models, helping youth gain greater self-confidence.
  • Boys Grow– learn to work together and develop core vocational skills that are applicable in the market like culinary arts, construction, farming, marketing, and public speaking.
  • Boys and Girls Club or Greater Kansas City– We help kids, ages 5-18, develop the skills, values and self-esteem they need to reach their greatest dreams.
  • Boy Scouts of America – Heart of America– Scouting means learning through living, making every day an adventure that challenges you to be your best. Learn essential life skills, build strength of body and strength of character, and have a blast while doing it!
  • Girl Scouts of NE Kansas & NW Missouri– Girl Scouting builds girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place.
  • HIKE Reading Coaches at Phoenix Family– provides low-income children individualized reading instruction in order to improve their literacy, leading to greater success in school and increased opportunities in life.
  • High Aspirations– High Aspirations will raise African American males’ aspirations by initiating innovative ways to improve their lives socially, emotionally, academically and spiritually.
  • Higher M-PACT– This high-risk youth mentoring program offers intense, long-term mentoring for a select group of high-risk urban adolescents ages 11-18, provides life and social skills training, spiritual development, education, job training, guidance counseling and recreational services.
  • Housing Authority of Kansas City, Missouri– List of Mentor programs from all around KC area. Find the perfect one for you!
  • Junior Achievement offers volunteer-delivered, kindergarten-12th grade programs that foster work-readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy skills.  To learn more about volunteer opportunities, please email Dina Kostrow at dkostrow@jagkc.org.
  • Kansas City Freedom Schools Initiative– program seeks to build strong, literate, and empowered children prepared to make a difference in themselves, their families, communities, nation and world today.
  • Latinos of Tomorrow– provide high schools of the Greater Kansas City Metro area a structure to assess and identify the educational gaps and barriers to college access faced by students.
  • Lead By Truth– providing exposure to education, economic, and social opportunities through mentoring.
  • Lead to Read– connects trusted, caring adult volunteers with kids in grades 1 through 4 from every walk of life. Once a week, for 30 minutes, Readers and kids explore the world by reading books provided by the children’s teachers, in the safety and security of an elementary school classroom.
  • Minddrive– focused perspective that serves high school students from around the Kansas City Metro. Using project-based learning and adult-to-student mentoring, we teach problem solving, critical thinking, and collaboration through math, science, technology, innovation and communication, giving our students deep-level experience with real world applications.
  • Missouri Mentor– offers an array of home- and community-based services and supports for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and other medically complex challenges.
  • One Heart Project– provides mentors, education and training programs, and ancillary elements to incarcerated and probated youth, to equip them with the necessary tools and life skills.
  • Turn the Page KC– mobilize the community to achieve reading proficiency at grade level or above for all third graders in Kansas City, Missouri; focuses on three specific issues that contribute to 3rd grade reading success: school readiness, summer learning, and school attendance.
  • Urban Ranger Corps– prepare at-risk inner city youth for responsible and productive futures through a program of disciplined work experience and service in their community, leadership development and individualized planning for post-High School careers.
  • Upper Room– transform and revitalize urban core neighborhoods by offering and supporting quality programs, including education, comprehensive health care, jobs, and community and economic development.
  • Tim Tebow Foundation Ministries – To bring Faith, Hope and Love to those needing a brighter day in their darkest hour of need. The Foundation utilizes the public platform that God has blessed Tim Tebow with to inspire and make a difference in peoples lives throughout the world. Work with disabled, cancerous, foster kids, orphans, and many more!

United Way is a great search tool for finding many resources including Mentoring Programs.

Click Here and refine search by zip code to find programs specific to your area.