Focusing on my topic of community and education, I am writing about the article “Youth Development Through Mentorship: A Los Angeles School-Based Mentorship Program Among Latino Children” by Coller and Kuo (2014). This article can be found in the Journal of Community Health, vol. 39. This research evaluates the Youth Empowerment Program (YEP), a school-based mentoring program, among Latino students in Los Angeles. The main reason for this article was Coller and Kuo wanted to test the feasibility of applying a previously validated relationship quality assessment tool a YEP directed toward urban Latino youth. In order to test this, the researchers asked the question: what are the outcomes of a successful mentor-mentee pairing relationship and YEP look like for low-income Latino elementary school children in LA? Coller and Kuo tested the quality of the relationships formed between the mentors, undergraduate students at UCLA, and the mentees, 4th and 5th graders at a Title I elementary school. The type of data needed to answer the question was organizational data and reports of acts, behaviors and events. The organizational data was used to describe the statistics about the elementary school and students. The study used Stoner Avenue Elementary School to collect their data, stating it was a Title I funded school of 376 students, with a 91% Latino student body, 55% classified as English language learners, and the entire student body receives free and reduced lunch (Coller & Kuo, 2014). This was most likely collected through public records. The reports of acts, behaviors, and events analyzed: “relationship length, degree of youth centeredness, emotional engagement and youth satisfaction” (Coller & Kuo, 2014). This data was collected through teacher-administered surveys students, ages 9-10, took. The students rated the statements on a scale from 1-4, which is ordinal data. The survey was a testing rank-order, there is no fixed interval. The YEP directed toward urban Latino youth was highly successful.  The outcomes of this program showed, of YEP’s pairs, 95% lasted at least a year, each year it of it existing demonstrating a higher percentage of relationships lasting at least 2 years. Using the previously validated relationship quality assessment tool was successful in evaluating school-based mentoring directed toward urban Latino youth (Coller & Kuo, 2014).

Coller, J. J., & Kuo, A. A. (2013). Youth development through mentorship: A los angeles school-based mentorship program among latino children. Journal of Community Health, 39, 316-321.