Friends of the Children-Boston partners with MentorPRO

MentorPRO today announced a partnership with Friends of the Children-Boston, a member of the national Friends of the Children network that pairs young people from high-risk communities with salaried, professional mentors for twelve years, no matter what. The collaboration will use MentorPRO to bring structure, visibility, and evidence-based supports to this uniquely long-term mentoring model, with a planned program launch in July 2026.

“Friends of the Children-Boston is one of the most extraordinary mentoring models in the country, and a twelve-year commitment requires tools that can hold that level of depth and consistency. We are honored to partner with Yi-Chin, Marie, and the entire Friends-Boston team to make sure every mentor and every young person has the structure and support they deserve over the long arc of this work,” said Jean Rhodes, PhD, Co-founder of MentorPRO and Director of the Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring at UMass Boston.

Friends of the Children-Boston serves children facing the highest levels of adversity, pairing each child with a salaried professional mentor, known as a Friend, from kindergarten through high school graduation. MentorPRO supports the Friends model with goal tracking, structured check-ins, real-time engagement data, and multilingual capabilities that meet families in the languages they speak at home. As part of the partnership, Friends-Boston will serve as an early site for MentorPRO’s expanding multilingual experience. This implementation will help test how language access features can strengthen family partnership and sustain engagement over many years.

The collaboration builds on more than two decades of peer-reviewed research, including studies linking sustained, structured mentoring relationships with stronger academic outcomes, greater sense of belonging, and improved mental health and well-being. It also positions Friends-Boston and MentorPRO to contribute new evidence about long-term, professionalized mentoring models.