The Kindness of Strangers: Adult Mentors, Urban Youth, and the New Voluntarism

The Kindness of Strangers tells the story of a group of concerned adults who mentor inner-city youth. It describes what volunteers can do to ameliorate the conditions of young people living in poverty. It chronicles the rise of the mentoring movement and examines its wider implications for education and social policy. Based on interviews with over 300 mentors, young people, scholars, and youth workers, The Kindness of Strangers takes a hard look at mentoring and asks some critical questions: How much can mentoring really accomplish? What does it take to be a successful mentor? What makes the difference between an effective program and one fraught with difficulties? Marc Freedman brings experience, research, and realism to these questions in an effort to present the truth about the mentoring movement sweeping America today. This revised edition contains a new introduction that highlights research that has been conducted since the original publication of the book in 1993. Marc Freedman is President of Civic Ventures, a research and development organization based in Berkeley, California. He has studied education and social policy for more than a decade and prior to starting Civic Ventures he was director of special projects for Public/Private Ventures, an organization focused on helping young people in poverty.