National Cares Mentoring Movement Inc

The National CARES Mentoring Movement is a pioneering, community-mobilization initiative that directly addresses the life-shredding effects of intergenerational Black poverty and lays a blueprint for community recovery. Anchored by a 58 U.S-city affiliate network, we are the nation’s recognized leader in the recruitment, training and engagement of African American mentors, and the only organization providing holistic programming on a national scale to undergird and advance impoverished Black children by providing them with the emotional, social, academic and career-readiness support they must have to become self-sustaining, successful contributors to our society. 

Founded in 2006 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina as Essence CARES while Susan L. Taylor was chief editor of Essence magazine, it is the mission of National CARES Mentoring Movement to transform the lives of Black children by inspiring, recruiting and mobilizing masses of caring Black men and women to mentor and nourish, challenge and champion them. Compelled to do more than just write about the predictable destinies of impoverished Black children, in 2008, after 27 years as its chief editor, Susan Taylor handed the reins to the next generation at Essence Communications to concentrate fully on building the National CARES Mentoring Movement. To date, we have recruited more than 150,000 mentors who are serving, or have served, more than 200,000 children. 

Recognizing that the traditional one-to-one mentoring model will never reach the multitudes of young people who need a mentor, we designed THE RISINGS, two group-mentoring models: 

THE RISING: ELEVATING EDUCATION, EXPECTATIONS AND SELF-ESTEEM:  a program that supports the development and healing of middle and high-school students both in school and community settings.

THE HBCU RISING: A CAMPUS-PUBLIC SCHOOLS LITERACY AND STEM MENTORING INITIATIVE: a three-tiered group-mentoring model in which corporate volunteers in STEM-related professions coach college students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), who then mentor middle school students during the school day in their math and science classes, as well as after school. 

Additionally, to ensure that children have caring and flourishing adults in their lives, we created programming to fortify and bolster parents, caregivers and community members: 

UNIVERSITY FOR PARENTS: a workforce-readiness program that is anchored in CARES’ culturally grounded and healing-centered wellness approach. The program leverages community partnerships to provide family members with the resources and opportunities that they need to become self-sustaining.

COMMUNITY WELLNESS AND WEALTH-BUILDING CIRCLES: healing-centered community gatherings that are guided by our wellness protocols and reinforce our culturally anchored trainings. The program is offered to adults by our 58 U.S. affiliates with the goal of supporting our communities to rebuild their villages.