I thank you for sharing this information. It promises to have considerable benefit. I have led a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in Chicago since 1975, thus I have over 30 consecutive years experience in the efforts to recruit youth and volunteers and keep them connected to each other for multiple years. In 1993 I created the Cabrini Connections tutor/mentor program with the help of six other volunteers. Since then more than 500 7th to 12th grade teens and more than 700 volunteers have been involved for six months to seven years. 33% of the youth stayed involved for 3 or more years. With the Internet, we're now reconnecting with some of the kids from the 1990s and before. I also created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993. It's goal is to collect and share information about volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring so that others could use this information to build their own programs, or to build investment strategies that support the growth of these programs in high poverty areas of the Chicago region. We put the T/MC on the internet in 1998 and you can find the library at tutormentorconnection.org I'll add a link to this study in our research section so others can find it and add their own thoughts. The programs I focus on are site based, where the staff and the place are key components in the mentoring, trust-building, learning and support for youth and volunteers. This is fundamentally different than BBBS models. I also focus on poverty as the reason for a need for programs, and on the funding and staffing challenges that limit the growth of long-term programs. I'm part of the list serve hosted by David DuBois, so you may have seen some of my comments there. I also have created a forum at http://tutormentorconnection.ning.com in an attempt to bring together different stakeholders. I hope you'll browse the information on the T/MC site and include some of it in your own research. I hope that you'll be able to continue to follow these matches beyond 30 months, because for a youth who is 10 and living in poverty, 30 months later he is 12 or 13 and still living in poverty, but much more influenced by peers. If the support from mentoring is not continuing, and getting stronger, I wonder how strong the impact can be in helping that youth get through school, into a job, and able to support his/her own family. Because I've been leading a program for so many years, these are some of the ideas I think about, and put into my own efforts. I look forward to connecting with you and to using what you are learning to help tutor/mentor programs grow in many places.