Early on, it seemed mentoring could be another casualty of the pandemic, the developmental relationships so many young people depended on for guidance and stability dissipating right when they were needed most. The COVID-19 crisis not only had the potential to disrupt learning, it threatened the ability to develop, maintain and grow networks of support — the social capital that is key to students’ thriving.

Mentoring programs across the country responded swiftly. With committed staff and volunteers and creative shifts to virtual mentoring, programs worked hard to limit lapses in the relationships, supports, and services that young people needed more than ever as new challenges and traumas came their way.

Experts in e-mentoring have long known the value of virtual connection. iCouldBe, a leading national organization in this work, has provided students ages 13 and up with online mentors for 20 years. Immediately following the COVID-19 outbreak, iCouldBe and Mentor partnered to develop and launch the Virtual Mentoring Portal, an online entry point that enables mentor/mentee matches to continue their relationships online. Later, CricketTogether, an e-mentoring platform for youngsters 12 and under,  joined up to expand the service.

The demand was intense: At one point during the pandemic, more than 400 mentoring programs from around the country, serving nearly 100,000 young people, asked iCouldBe about moving their in-person services to the platform.

Although many mentoring programs made the pivot to virtual to fill a gap in an emergency, they quickly realized the unique, long-term possibilities of virtual connections: Technology could help match mentor/mentee pairs; online connections could span time zones and eliminate transportation issues for hard-to-reach youth, and the data generated could allow for detailed tracking and evaluation of tutoring’s reach and effectiveness.

Read the full article about virtual mentoring by Kate Schrauth and David Shapiro at The 74.