| The Mentoring Partnership of Minnesota, orginally known as Twin Cities One to One, was formed on a vision that every youth in our community could live a better life if they had an adult mentor to guide them. Founded in 1994, Twin Cities One to One was established as an affiliate of National One-to-One now called MENTOR. Leading philanthropists, educators, social activists, business people and community leaders from the Twin Cities helped form the organization realizing that such an entity could fill a critical gap for effective products, services and processes that would encourage and grow mentoring across the state. In 1997, Twin Cities One-to-One became an independent 501(c)3 organization. In May of 2000, Twin Cities One-to-One changed to the Mentoring Partnership of Minnesota.
The idea for launching Twin Cities One to One originally came from Robert J. Dayton. The Dayton family has a long history of community leadership in a variety of business, social and philanthropic arenas. In 1992, Mr. Dayton attended an investment seminar where two highly successful businessmen were presenters. Geoffrey Boisi and Raymond Chambers had made a decision to use some of their personal wealth to address the issue that thousands of young people across the country felt no one cared about them, were not graduating from high school, were not pursuing higher education, and felt cut off from the United States economic system.
Mr. Chambers and Boise founded One to One-The National Mentoring Partnership to ensure that all young people would have access to caring adult mentors to guide and support them in becoming successful in life. The key strategy for One to One-The National Mentoring Partnership was focused on mobilizing local communities and local community leaders to engage all sectors in ensuring that more mentoring was available for children and youth.
At this same time, Mr. Dayton was the chair of the United Way of Minneapolis Area Board of Directors and charged with expanding Success by Six. Mr. Dayton recognized the One to One efforts would be a natural extension of Success by Six. Success by Six efforts was helping ensure kids had what they needed socially, emotionally, cognitively, and developmentally by the age of six. Twin Cites One to Ones role would be to focus on ensuring that children ages 7-18 years of age would have access to mentors to help them continue their healthy social, emotional, and cognitive development.
In late 1992, Search Institute, a nationally recognized research insitution, performed a feasibility study. The study was designed to provide information and recommendations about the issues which would need to be considered in addressing the question of affiliating with the national One to One organization. The study was guided by two overarching questions:
- What is needed in the Twin Cities in order to reach a goal that every young person who needs or wants an appropriately screened, matched and trained Mentor has one?
- What role might One to One play in helping the Twin Cities attain that goal?
The outcomes of the study found that 95% of the potential stakeholders surveyed either strongly agreed or agreed that some new form of centralized/coordinated effort was needed in the Twin Cities. In 1994, Twin Cities One-to-One was born.
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