APIE Mentoring by the Numbers:

• 972: Number of volunteers who have registered to mentor through APIE for the 2013-14 school year
• $21,938: Value of volunteer service each WEEK if all 972 are placed, according to Independent Sector’s value of a volunteer hour in Texas
• $125: APIE’s cost to support one mentor for one school year
• 124: Number of Austin ISD schools where APIE mentors can serve
• 4,000: Number of students still on the waiting list for a mentor in Austin ISD

Mentors can positively impact student attitudes and ambitions. Research has proved many benefits of mentoring, including:

• keeping students in school
• building students’ self-esteem
• reducing likelihood of student involvement in risky behavior or use of illicit substances
• decreasing depressive symptoms
• improving student grades and academic attitudes
• Developing students’ communications skills,
• modeling and encouraging goal setting and taking steps to achieve those goals

To meet the needs of more students, we invite you to Give the Gift of a Mentor this December. Beginning with #GivingTuesday on December 3 and continuing through December 31, APIE’s goal is to raise $10,000 to broaden support for its Mentoring Program. Thanks to a generous $5,000 matching grant challenge from the Oppenheimer Foundation, a private Houston-based family foundation, your donation has the power to double its impact!

About #GivingTuesday

#GivingTuesday is a movement to create a national day of giving to kick off the giving season added to the calendar on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The second annual #GivingTuesday is on December 3, 2013. In the same way that retail stores take part in Black Friday, we want the giving community to come together for #GivingTuesday. (via)