Our mission is to create a replicable model that professionalizes traditional mentoring by using clinically-focused mentors to work intensively with youth and their families throughout middle school. Through the science of relationship-based learning, we foster a profound sense of mattering that expands opportunities in the lives of children. Co-founded by speaker, author, and youth advocate, Liz Murray, The Arthur Project takes an innovative approach to the field of mentoring, offering a new model inspired by Murray’s own unlikely change in life trajectory, from homeless youth to Harvard graduate. A core tenet of The Arthur Project’s approach is that all successful youth intervention relies on the combination of effective relationships with caring adults, and the strategic development of self-efficacy in youth. The Arthur Project mentors are graduate social work students who are clinicians-in-training. We currently run our mentor programs with 180 students in 6th through 8th grade. Our mentors are intentionally each matched with 3-6 mentees who become their primary focus, spending upwards of 500 hours with each student, each year. Mentors provide services to students through three tiers of intervention: (1) Individual school-based counseling sessions; (2) Small afterschool group work; and (3) Saturday community-based activities and events. We also support a smaller subset of 25 parents and guardians through our Family Advocacy Program. These parents receive individual and group support to achieve individual and family goals, with a focus on developing financial literacy and wealth, increasing education, and securing lucrative employment. At the core of The Arthur Project, our hope is that each of our students and families graduates our program with the knowledge that not only do they matter to their mentors, but to the world beyond.
