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Mentors Teach Life Skills, Provide Foundation for Academic Success

By Carolee Walker

Washington - It doesn't take much to become a mentor and have a positive influence on a young person, says 2008 American Idol finalist and pop star David Archuleta. "You don't have to be this great, amazing person to have a really big influence on people's lives," Archuleta said.

Archuleta is among several U.S. celebrities, including actors Terrence Howard, Gabrielle Union and Michael Copon, who are supporting Children Uniting Nations (CUN), one of the premier nongovernmental organizations working with at-risk and foster youth, by pledging to recruit mentors and raise awareness of at-risk youth issues, including mentoring.

"It's important for foster kids to be able to talk to someone, to feel like they belong somewhere and to feel like they can express themselves," Archuleta said. "A lot of kids - and not just foster kids - feel they aren't worth that much and that they are not capable of accomplishing things."

"There is nothing greater than being part of a family, especially for someone who needs it so badly," said Daphna Ziman, CUN chairwoman, at a State Department event concluding CUN's annual conference in Washington in early June.

In CUN programs, relationship mentors commit to spending two days per month building a bond with an assigned foster youth. Activities may include outings to movies, museums and sporting events. Academic mentors provide weekly tutoring. Both Archuleta, considered a positive role model for young people, and Copon, whose adopted brother was a foster child, are serving as spokesmen for CUN's mentoring programs.

"Watching my mother raise foster children has inspired me to put my needs behind the needs of these children," Copon said.

DEVELOPING A SENSE OF SECURITY

Foster care is a short-term alternative for children who have been removed from their birth parents or legal guardians by state authority. Unlike with children who are adopted, parents are expected to visit their children in foster care, except in unusual circumstances.

More than 500,000 children live in foster care in the United States, according to Karen Bass, a representative in the California state legislature. California has more children in foster care than any other state. CUN works directly with more than 2,500 mentors in California and partners with agencies around the country to provide training for mentors.

Children who move in and out of foster homes have a hard time developing an inner sense of security because they do not experience unconditional love, according to Clarence B. Jones, a scholar in residence at Stanford University, who was a foster child.

Regulating emotions, developing self-control and learning patience are the most important life skills a mentor can teach a foster child because these are the skills needed to learn how to relate well to others, said Victoria Stevens, a clinical psychologist who develops training materials and conducts research for CUN on innovative academic mentoring programs for foster youth. Mentors also provide a foundation for academic success for foster children by demonstrating empathy and providing perspective to children who have been separated from their families and by helping to counter the effects of early trauma.

Both of Archuleta's parents are musicians and provided the mentoring Archuleta needed to find an outlet for his own expression. Even today, Archuleta uses music to communicate, he said. "When I sing, I feel like I don't have to say anything."

But children in temporary living situations often do not have adults around who provide mentoring, which enhances many aspects of young people's social and emotional development, said Ziman, who believes the concept of "family" today is met by the community.

"We can't look at 'his child' or 'her child,'" Ziman said at the State Department. "These are the world's children."

According to CUN, 59 percent of mentored teens receive better grades in school and have a better chance of going on to higher education.

Ashley Williams, 19, entered the foster care system at the age of 10. Now a sophomore at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Williams has lived in 26 foster homes and attended 32 schools. "My journey has been rough," said Williams, who used church and school to overcome her emotional turmoil.

At 15, Williams was assigned a mentor who connected with her and guided her through adolescence and helped her achieve the grades she needed to get into college. Today, Williams says her mentor's family "is my family." In turn, Williams helped found the UCLA Bruin Guardian Scholars Program, which guides foster youth on the UCLA campus through college life and helps them arrange to stay on campus during breaks.

As a foster youth you struggle with finding yourself because you take a bit of everyone with you - including the bad, said Williams, who suggests that young people link up with a mentor and write. Although Williams continues to keep a journal and write poetry, there is one poem that she recites to herself whenever she encounters an obstacle.

I have been abused, battered, scorned, and torn by this thing called life

Yet I still stand with my head held high...

I am not giving up...

I choose to endure...

I will survive this thing called life.

Additional information on foster care mentoring is available on the Children Uniting Nations ( http://www.childrenunitingnations.org ) Web site.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)