The Kindness of Strangers: Adult Mentors, Urban Youth, and the New Volunteerism / Edition 1

by Marc Freedman

Overview

The Kindness of Strangers takes a hard, realistic look at mentoring while offering a vivid portrayal of the mentoring movement and how ordinary citizens in cities across America are trying to turn young lives around.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781555425579
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	10/06/1993
Edition description:	1st ed
Pages:	183
Product dimensions:	5.12(w) x 10.24(h) x 1.57(d)

About the Author

MARC FREEDMAN has studied education and youth programs for more than a decade and is director of special projects for Public/Private Ventures, a research and development organization based in Philadelphia that focuses on helping kids in poverty. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Table of Contents

1. A Call to Action
2. Great Expectations
3. Recurring Fervor
4. Birth of a Movement
5. The Benefits of Mentoring
6. The Limits of Mentoring
7. Making the Most of Mentoring
8. Closing the Caring Gap
9. Re-engaging the Middle Class
10. Reinventing Community

Editorial Reviews

In the examples of adult mentor-youth relationships presented by Freedman, who is on the staff of Public/Private Ventures, a Philadelphia research organization that focuses on youngsters in poverty, we hear from eight men and women who ``answered the call.'' They describe their not unqualified successes in helping young people through volunteer projects, and the strength of their commitment as mentors. An overview of various programs throughout the country--I have a Dream, One-on-One, Project RAISE--discusses various strategies of outreach to youth. Mentors are often challenged to the point of frustration, yet their experience of small victories and subtle changes in their young mentees are inspiring. As Freedman notes, ``Mentoring enables us to participate in the essential but unfinished drama of reinventing community, while reaffirming that there is an important role for each of us in it.'' (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Americans have been volunteering for various social causes for quite some time. Freedman takes a look at the history of a number of volunteer movements, including such familiar ventures as Big Brothers/Big Sisters and less familiar antecedents such as Friendly Visiting. Emphasizing the importance of one-on-one relationships between adult mentors and urban youth, who so often experience poverty and violence in their lives, he argues that mentoring is an important partial solution to many of our social problems. Several mentors describe their experiences, and Freedman distills some guidelines for successful mentoring. This book should find a welcome spot in most social science collections.-- John Moryl, Yeshiva Univ. Lib., New York

Library Journal