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Presidential Proclamation: National Mentoring Month 2002 |
CENTER FOR HEALTH COMMUNICATION
The
Harvard Mentoring Project
YEAR ONE REPORT:
NATIONAL MENTORING MONTH 2002
"Who Mentored You?
Thank them...and pass it on.
Mentor a Child."
January 1, 2002
marked the launch of the first annual National Mentoring Month – a large-scale
public service campaign conducted in collaboration with some of the nation’s
largest media companies and leading nonprofit organizations. The
campaign’s goal is to recruit volunteer mentors to work with children
who are at risk of not leading healthy, productive lives.
Research has shown that introducing a mentor into a young person's life can play a powerful role in preventing drug abuse and youth violence, while greatly enhancing a young person's prospects for leading a fulfilling and productive life. Mentoring programs in communities across the country have waiting lists of young people seeking to be matched with volunteer mentors.
The Harvard Mentoring Project conceived the idea for National Mentoring Month, and has spearheaded its development with support from the National Mentoring Partnership and other nonprofit organizations.
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The campaign’s media partners include: AOL Time Warner; the ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC television networks; Viacom Outdoor; Newsweek; local TV stations in the top 25 media markets; and leading newspapers, radio stations and outdoor advertising companies throughout the country.
National nonprofit partners include: The Ad Council, America's Promise
– The Alliance for Youth, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, Communities
In Schools, Mentoring USA, the National Association of Broadcasters, The
National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation, The Partnership
for a Drug-Free America, The Points of Light Foundation, and Save the
Children.
Campaign Overview
The January 2002 campaign included White House and Congressional involvement, national and local media, and extensive community outreach. In more than 40 states and cities, a local partnership of mentoring programs provided a telephone number for prospective mentors to call, and handled screening, referral, training, and supervision of volunteers.
At the national level, AOL Time Warner mobilized several of its divisions to support the campaign, including HBO, the Turner Networks, the magazines division, America Online, and the AOL Time Warner Foundation. The four leading broadcast networks, ABC (Disney), CBS (Viacom), Fox (News Corp.) and NBC (GE), provided strong support through network-produced public service announcements (PSAs) which ran in prime time. All the national ads carried the National Mentoring Partnership’s toll-free number (1-888-432-MENTOR) and web address (www.mentoring.org), enabling individuals to obtain information about mentoring programs in their own communities that need volunteers. Full-page ads supporting the campaign appeared in donated space in The New York Times, Newsweek, People, and Time. National Mentoring Month also won the strong support and active participation of President George W. Bush, as well as leading governors and mayors throughout the country. And, the U.S. Postal Service issued a 34-cent postage stamp promoting the theme of “Mentoring A Child.”
At the local level, television stations in many of the largest media
markets ran month-long campaigns that included elements such as PSAs,
news coverage, public affairs programming, mentor-a-thons and web-site
promotions. Most participating stations used PSAs that were produced
for the campaign by HBO, customizing the spots to identify local nonprofit
and corporate sponsors. At the local level, the campaign also made
extensive use of radio, print, and outdoor advertising.
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“Who Mentored You?”
To stimulate a national conversation about the importance of mentoring, the Harvard Mentoring Project created a special initiative which encouraged members of the general public to think about individuals in their own lives who offered them guidance, showed them the ropes, and helped them become who they are today. Most were informal mentors (relatives, neighbors, older friends, coaches, clergy, or teachers) who may not have been aware of their lasting influence. The campaign has emphasized that, today, too many young people do not get enough of that kind of support. The slogan is "Who mentored you?" and the call to action is two-fold:
· Thank them. January is National Mentoring Month. It's a great time to reconnect with people who mentored you. Let them know what a difference they made.
· And pass it on! Many kids today are looking for someone to help them achieve their hopes and dreams. Mentoring programs need volunteers.
"So
Many Things I Don't Know" TV PSA
Television Ads
The campaign's national television ads were produced by HBO (AOL Time Warner) with Tom Fontana (executive producer, Oz) donating his services as director and executive producer. In keeping with the strong desire on the part of many Americans to do something meaningful to help the country, the ads featured young people of different ethnic backgrounds speaking directly to the camera about their hopes and dreams. The ads closed with a tag line encouraging adults to "help them get there" by volunteering as a mentor. Click here to view the campaign's national television public service announcements.
The leading broadcast networks ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC each produced their
own public service announcements in support of National Mentoring Month,
and aired them throughout January.
Local Media Partners
In many of the largest media markets, a single television network affiliate served as the local lead TV partner for National Mentoring Month, and sponsored a month-long, station-wide, on-air campaign in collaboration with the campaign’s local lead nonprofit partner. Each local campaign provided the telephone number of a local nonprofit partner that handled recruitment of volunteers. The local lead TV partners included: WJZ (Baltimore), WHDH (Boston), WMAQ (Chicago), WBNS (Columbus, OH), KTVT (Dallas/Ft. Worth), KCNC (Denver), WVIT (Hartford, CT), Fox 26 (Houston), KNBC (Los Angeles), Fox47 (Madison, WI), WFOR (Miami/Ft. Lauderdale), WCCO (Minneapolis/St. Paul), WNBC (New York City), WPVI (Philadelphia), KNXV (Phoenix), WGME (Portland, ME), KGW (Portland, OR), WJAR (Providence, RI), WRAL (Raleigh-Durham), WWBT (Richmond, VA), KPIX (San Francisco), Univision (San Francisco), WFLA (Tampa/St. Petersburg), KGUN (Tucson, AZ), WRC (Washington, D.C.), and WPBF (West Palm Beach).
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Print Ads
The advertising agency Margeotes Fertitta and Partners collaborated with
HBO to create a series of print ads (pictured below) as a companion to
the TV spots, with acclaimed photographer Sante D'Orazio donating his
services. The print campaign ran as donated full-page ads in The
New York Times in collaboration with The Partnership for a Drug-Free
America, and in leading magazines (including Newsweek, Time,
People, The Hollywood Reporter, and Daily Variety),
metropolitan newspapers, and outdoor locations across the country.
Government Support
On January 18, 2002, President George W. Bush issued a Proclamation designating January as National Mentoring Month. On January 29, 2002, in his State of the Union Address, President Bush encouraged Americans to volunteer as mentors.
On January 23, 2002, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a unanimous Resolution recognizing January as National Mentoring Month.
State officials who actively participated in National Mentoring Month 2002 included: California Governor Gray Davis and First Lady Sharon Davis, Colorado Governor Bill Owens, Connecticut Governor John G. Rowland, Delaware Governor Ruth Ann Minner, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Georgia Lt. Governor Mark Taylor, Iowa Governor Thomas J. Vilsack, Iowa Lt. Governor Sally Pederson, Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendenning, Nebraska Governor Mike Johanns, New York Governor George Pataki, North Carolina Governor Michael F. Easley, and Wisconsin Governor Scott McCallum.
Federal agencies participating in National Mentoring Month 2002 included the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Justice (JUMP Grants Program), and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (Media Match Program).
U.S. Postage Stamp
On January 10, 2002, the U.S. Postal Service held "A First Day of Issue" ceremony in Annapolis, Maryland to mark the release of a 34-cent "Mentoring a Child" postage stamp; a total of 125 million stamps were printed. In a press release announcing the new stamp, the U.S. Postal Service stated, "The Harvard Mentoring Project and The National Mentoring Partnership are working together to launch the first annual National Mentoring Month. The Mentoring a Child stamp and National Mentoring Month honor the volunteers and organizations that sponsor or participate in mentoring programs."
Harvard Mentoring Project
National Mentoring Month is the newest component of an ongoing national
media campaign promoting mentoring. The
Harvard Mentoring Project and its broadcast and nonprofit partners
launched the campaign four years ago. Since then, the campaign has
received over $150 million in donated television airtime, and has generated
more than 700,000 telephone calls from people seeking information on mentoring
programs in their own communities. Findings from an informal survey
suggest that approximately 20% of callers have become mentors. The
Harvard Mentoring Project is an initiative of the Harvard
Center for Health Communication, which previously created the National
Designated Driver Campaign.
Funding
The development of National Mentoring Month has been supported by grants
to the Harvard Mentoring Project from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
and The MCJ Foundation. The AOL Time Warner Foundation underwrote
and managed the creation of new e-mentoring software, the redesign of
the National Mentoring Partnership's web site (www.mentoring.org), and
upgrading of the National Mentoring Partnership's database of 4400 mentoring
programs. J.P. Morgan Chase supported the development of campaign
materials for the New York City/Tri-State market.
For more information, please contact:
The Harvard Mentoring Project
677 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
Tel: 617-432-1038
Fax: 617-731-8184
E-mail: mentor@hsph.harvard.edu
HSPH Home Page
Copyright, 2000, President and Fellows of Harvard College