Supporting efforts to promote greater awareness of the need for youth mentors and increased involvement with youth through mentoring.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 25) supporting efforts to promote greater awareness of the need for youth mentors and increased involvement with youth through mentoring.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on House Resolution 25.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, not long ago I read the results of a study that was done on the Fullerton County Public Schools in

1940, and in this study the teachers in the Fullerton schools were asked what their main concerns were. The list read like this: Number one concern was talking in class; number two was chewing gum in school; number three was getting out of turn in line when you went from one class to another; and number four was not putting waste in the wastepaper baskets.

More recently someone went back to the Fullerton public schools and asked the same question; what was the main concern that the teachers had. The list had changed somewhat. The number one concern was drug and alcohol abuse; secondly was gangs; and then followed weapons, teenage pregnancy, teenage suicide, and violence.

I guess this study, as I saw it, Mr. Speaker, resonated with my own experience of 40 years working with young people, because when I first started working with young people in about 1960, the out-of-wedlock birth rate was roughly 5 percent; today it is 33 percent. We have 18 million fatherless young people in our country today. Most of them have not even seen their father or met them.

In 1960, a relatively small percent of our young people were living in homes without both biological parents. Today, almost half live in homes without both biological parents. Drug abuse and gangs remained relatively unheard of in 1960. Today, as everyone knows, they are a major problem in this country. We have become the most violent Nation in the world for teenage homicides and suicide.

So I guess the question begs itself, Mr. Speaker, as to where we are headed as a Nation. I think if we examine the data on a year-to-year basis, it is a little hard to tell where we are moving, but if we look at it in 40- to 50-year increments, 1940 versus 2003, we can see some alarming trends.

So the question is, Mr. Speaker, what do we do at this point? What can we do? We cannot legislate families staying together. We cannot legislate strong values. But one thing we can do, Mr. Speaker, is we can provide mentoring for young people. A mentoring relationship is a one-to-one relationship with a positive adult role model who, number one, cares unconditionally about a young person.

It is very powerful for a young person in a school when an adult, who is not a parent, not a grandparent, not a teacher, not a preacher, has no axe to grind, but simply cares enough about that young person to show up and spend time with that young person every week.

Secondly, a mentor is one who affirms. A tremendous number of our young people today are growing up without affirmation. Whether it be at home or at school with their peers, no one is saying, I really approve of you, I believe in you, I know you can do this, you can accomplish something. And essentially that is what a mentor does. They are someone who affirms and sees something in a young person that that young person may not even know they have within themselves.

Thirdly, I think a mentor is one who provides a vision. So many young people today simply have no role model in their lives. They dropped out of school early, are working at a minimum paying job and have no great aspirations. Many times a mentor can see something in a young person that points in a direction that certainly is much more productive than that.

Mr. Speaker, mentoring works. Research studies indicate that mentoring reduces drug and alcohol abuse by a great deal, sometimes as much as 50 percent. It reduces teenage pregnancy, teenage violence, and gang membership. It improves peer and family relationships, self- confidence, school attendance, grades and graduation rates. It is estimated that currently 17 million children need a mentor in our society today, and less than 1 million have that experience.

The mentoring initiative is critical to our Nation's well-being. I think most of the great nations of the world that have fallen apart have disassembled from within. I think we need to address the problem what is going on with our young people, and mentoring does this. I hope that this body supports mentoring programs as we recognize National Mentoring Month.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner), the chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, whose support for mentoring has been very much appreciated.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), who is chairman of the Subcommittee on Education Reform and also a strong supporter of mentoring.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentlewoman's support of this resolution, and I might just mention there was a Mentoring for Success amendment that was added to H.R. 1, which provided for mentoring grants and programs around the Nation. It was interesting to note that we had over 1,300 applications for less than 300 grants. Obviously, there is great interest in mentoring around the country. We know that those monies will be put to good use, that thousands of young people will benefit; and above all, I believe it is important that we remember that this provides a national clearinghouse where we can evaluate all kinds of mentoring, what works and what does not work, and provide a central clearinghouse that we think will be very important.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Mrs. DAVIS of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I am honored to join the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) in support of House Resolution 25, which recognizes the critical role of mentors in our children's lives.

On the day following our Nation's 37th Super Bowl, I can think of no better way to commemorate the very spirit of this bill than by sharing the inspirational story of Mr. Lincoln Kennedy, who plays right tackle for the Oakland Raiders. Lincoln grew up and attended Morris High School in my hometown of San Diego, California. And just as it is today, the student body at Morris was largely diverse and comprised of children from mostly working-class backgrounds. The school football field doubled as the team's practice field, and ongoing electrical problems allowed for day games only.

High school football coach John Schacklett spotted the 6 foot 6 inch freshman and immediately recognized his potential. He urged him to try out for the school's football team, and Lincoln agreed.

Although forced to play in tennis shoes because the school was unable to acquire the size 17 \1/2\ cleats that he required, it did not take long for Lincoln to develop under the constant guidance and encouragement of a coach who not only believed in him, but took the time to invest in him. And what a difference it made.

Lincoln returned to his hometown on January 26, 2003, to play in Super Bowl XXXVII. Reflecting back on the achievements of his life, Lincoln wondered what he would have done had Coach Schacklett not approached him that fateful day, recognized that he possessed something special, and pushed him to recognize it, too.

``I wonder how I ever would have gotten to college and gotten a college education or what type of job I would be doing right now,'' he said. Fortunately, as a result of the mentoring of Coach John Schacklett, Lincoln will never need to worry about the answer to that question.

The significance of this story should not be underestimated. Lincoln Kennedy represents the millions of youth in this country who stand to benefit immensely from the support of a positive role model. And Coach Schacklett represents the millions of mentors who also benefit from the rewarding and enriching experience of investing in a young person's life and later watching that person grow and succeed.

This case illustrates what we have known for years, and what my colleague just spoke about, that mentoring makes a difference. It provides children and young adults with a stronger sense of self-esteem and optimism for the future. It fuels their ambitions and pushes them to realize their own potential. It helps them to visualize a future other than what they might have aspired to.

We know that this learning experience is a two-way street. Mentoring often brings together people of various ethnic, religious, or socioeconomic backgrounds. It is easy to turn to those with whom we share obvious similarities. The mentoring relationship, however, often forces us outside of our own comfort zone, allowing us to view the world from different perspectives and appreciate one another's experiences and life circumstances.

In today's world, particularly, this level of understanding has never been more important; and we must do all that we can to foster these relationships.

Mr. Speaker, President Bush's declaration of January 2003 as National Mentoring Month marked a significant stride in this direction. With the passage of this resolution, I hope to reinforce the positive impact that mentoring can have on so many of our children's lives.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to close by sharing some of the lessons I learned while serving as the executive director of the Aaron Price Fellows Program in my own community.

The first is that simply giving of yourself, be it your time, your advice, and even your interest, makes a difference. For a young person, the security and the confidence that comes from knowing that someone, someone outside of his or her own family believes in them and cares about them is immeasurable.

The second is that there is just no telling how far a young person who receives the sort of personal attention and one-on-one mentoring will go. I am proud to have two individuals on my staff who I personally mentored many years ago, and I cannot tell Members how meaningful it is for me to see how successful they have become today.

Finally, it is impossible to predict how involved or enthusiastic a mentor will become in a child's life. In my experience with the Fellows program, I have seen countless individuals become so invested in a young person's development that they surpassed any and all expectations of the job. I had the opportunity to demonstrate this myself as a mentor; and I can personally attest to the fact that the greater one's commitment, the richer the reward.

One of San Diego's outstanding leaders, who overcame a lifetime of adversity and built a successful life for himself despite the odds, once told me that the single most influential factor in his life was a childhood mentor. I believe that his story, and so many others, prove that mentoring can and does make a pivotal difference in a young person's life.

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to join with my colleagues and thank the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) for bringing this resolution forward, and urge passage of House Resolution 25.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support he National Mentoring Month Resolution introduced by Congressman Tom Osborne. This resolution recognizes and supports the efforts of mentoring programs across our Nation. It embraces the notion that volunteer mentors can change the life of a troubled teen. This resolution celebrates the month of January as a month-long campaign focused on raising awareness of mentoring programs, their impact on our youth, and information on how to volunteer to become a mentor.

I am proud to be an original cosponsor to Congressman Osborne's resolution. Both Coach Osborne and I worked as mentors before coming to Congress and both felt a need to raise awareness of the cause once we were elected. Last year, we successfully passed the Mentoring for Success program, which provided money to start up new mentoring programs across the country. In addition, we founded the Congressional Mentoring Caucus, a bipartisan organization designed to disseminate information about the positive impact mentoring programs have on our Nation's children.

Mentoring programs offer many benefits to children, particularly as it relates to educating our children. These programs are proven to help prevent children from dropping out of high school. In the state of Florida, we had a big problem. Only 53 percent of our children were graduating from high school. So, in Central Florida, we decided to do something about it by creating the Orlando/Orange County Compact Program. The Compact Program is a mentoring program that matches up students at risk of dropping out of high school with

mentors from the business community. The mentors meet with the students one hour a week to work on homework and projects.

The results from this mentoring program have been dramatic. Over a period of 10 years, 98 percent of the children in the Compact Program have graduated from high school--the number one graduation rate in the United States.

I would also like to discuss the crime prevention benefits of mentoring programs. In Florida, 70 percent of the inmates in our jails and prisons are high school dropouts. It costs taxpayers $25,000 a year for each federal prisoner, compared with only $5,000 a year to educate a student in our public schools. Clearly, making the investment in mentoring programs now will save us literally hundreds of millions of dollars down the road in terms of reduced jail costs and reduced welfare costs.

In summary, mentoring programs make a meaningful difference in the lives of our young people; they improve education, prevent crimes, and will save us money. I urge all of my colleagues to support National Mentoring Month by participating in local programs in their home districts--together we can make a difference in the lives of our children!

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) and the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Davis) for offering this resolution today.

I do not know if there are many advocates for mentoring better than the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) and all he has done in his lifetime for this, and I think we are fortunate to have him in support of this issue on the floor on a number of occasions.

I, too, rise in support of the resolution that recognizes the benefits of mentoring for America's young people, the many contributions of mentors, and the need for more mentors to get involved in the lives of our youth.

Many children throughout the United States face difficult circumstances in their lives. For instance, too many of our youth become teenaged parents or do not complete high school. These are just two examples of youth who might benefit from the support and guidance of a caring and responsible adult.

In fact, the positive effects of mentoring include increased school attendance, improved rates of secondary school graduation and college attendance, decreased involvement with drugs and alcohol, and decreased violent behavior.

In early January, the President declared January 2003 as National Mentoring Month and in doing so, recognized the vital contributions of dedicated mentors and encouraged more Americans to make a difference in the hearts and souls of our communities by volunteering their time to meet the needs of America's youth. As President Bush said, mentors ``provide friendship and support to young people who are facing challenging situations, serve as positive role models, and help to instill important values, goals and skills.''

Mentoring programs come in all shapes and sizes, and often schools, churches and community groups come together to form mentoring partnerships. There are thousands of mentoring programs across the country, yet there is still a shortage of mentors. It is estimated that mentors are not available to a large percentage of young people who need or want them. Too many children in our Nation are growing up without support and guidance in their lives.

We cannot afford inaction. A small commitment of time, energy or financial support can change the life of a child. I am pleased to promote the greater awareness of the need for youth mentors, and I urge an ``aye'' vote on this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, in a time when our children face increased dangers from crime and other social ills, it is imperative that we seize upon every opportunity to ensure that their lives take a course that will deliver them safely to adulthood, properly equipped with the tools needed to thrive, grow and take over the responsibilities of leadership in our society.

We know that children learn and emulate what they are taught and have seen in their environment. Their realities are whatever society at large has presented--either through direct contact, or through the potentially boundless influence of television and the internet. We understand, however, that the best way to ensure that our children are imbued with the values, education and culture that a strong nation requires is to make sure that we take individual responsibility for the upbringing of every single child in our society.

Mentoring is an excellent way to reach beyond just our immediate families to embrace our extended family of young Americans. It is true that it takes a village to raise a child, and if each of us American villagers assumes the shared responsibility of looking after our most precious resources by mentoring them, we will go a long way toward making our society a better place.

Mentoring can take form in many ways--from serving as a tutor to a young person who needs academic help, to coaching young people in Little League and other sports events designed to instill confidence and leadership. Simply being a good example to a young person in our lives can leave an indelible positive mark that they will be likely to pass along to another youngster when they become of age.

January is National Mentoring Month, and we should encourage all Americans to serve as role models and mentors now and throughout their lives. The minimal sacrifice that it takes to expose a young person to what is good and to help shape their values system in a positive way can be best looked upon as priceless investment in our future. This is an investment that all Americans can afford to make, and one that none of us can afford to ignore.