Sponsors (32)
The bill expands mentoring to improve educational, social, and workforce outcomes for many young people — including underserved youth — but may leave high-need communities shortchanged and shift costs and responsibilities onto schools, nonprofits, and volunteers without dedicated public funding.
Children and youth — especially underserved groups (Alaska Native and American Indian youth, foster youth, and low-income children) — gain improved academic, social-emotional, and mental-health outcomes through expanded, culturally informed mentoring programs.
Students and young adults gain greater career exposure and employment opportunities through mentoring, supporting workforce readiness.
Children and community organizations benefit from increased mentor recruitment and public–private–nonprofit collaboration that can help close the mentor gap affecting roughly 1.8 million youth.
Rural communities and low-income areas risk being left underserved because a volunteer-driven expansion may unevenly reach high-need populations without targeted funding or capacity-building.
Schools, universities, and local governments may incur implementation costs to integrate mentoring programs if no dedicated funding is provided, straining limited budgets.
Nonprofits and taxpayers may bear more of the burden as emphasis on public–private partnerships shifts responsibility away from sustained public funding.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Designates and supports a National Mentoring Month, urging awareness, mentor recruitment, and collaboration to close the mentoring gap.
Official title: Recognizing January 2026 as "National Mentoring Month".
Introduced February 5, 2026 by Sheldon Whitehouse · Last progress February 5, 2026
Recognizes and encourages observance of National Mentoring Month to raise awareness of mentoring needs, recruit volunteers, and promote public–private–nonprofit partnerships to expand quality mentoring for young people. It summarizes evidence that mentoring supports academic, social, emotional, mental-health, leadership, and employment outcomes and notes a large mentoring gap — roughly 40% of youth lack an outside-the-home mentor — with a call to integrate mentoring into programs and policies.