Sirius Radio Listeners Learn about Friends of the Children

Dateline: April 10, 2011

Friends of the Children (Friends) is “the only real game changer I know,”  David Kirp told Bob Edwards, a 30 year veteran of NPR and now host of Bob Edwards Weekend (Sirius Radio).  Kirp is the author of Kids First: Five Big Ideas for Transforming Children’s Lives and America’s Future. Ensuring that all kids have access to a caring adult is one of Kirp’s Five Big Ideas.

Friends selects kindergarteners who are already starting to tumble through a cycle of troubled families, poorly performing schools and decaying neighborhoods, and matches them with paid professional mentors, called Friends. Friends spend four hours a week with each child, all year, from kindergarten through high school, no matter what.

“We are the anchor and the sail for these children,” says Friends executive director Judy Stavisky.  “We don’t wait for our children to show up at our program–we identify children in kindergarten when sadly, we can observe risk factors that will lead to more serious problems later on. Then, we stick with them for 12 years, until they finish high school.”

Judy Stavisky explained that Friends operates in Boston, Cincinnati, New York, Seattle and Portland and Klamath Falls, OR.  Mentors have a critical job–to be the child’s advocate, support academic progress and cultivate talents.   “Our work with children is often informal, but it is always purposeful,” says Stavisky.  Friends have a critical job:

• Visit each child at school every week.  They often sit with the child in the classroom and they consult with teachers, help with homework and arrange for tutoring.
• Share practical skills. Friends might teach a first grader to set an alarm to get up for school on time, show a third grader how to do laundry when there is no one at home to help, help young adolescents make a budget and open a bank account or guide teenagers in finding part-time work and applying to college.
• Coach children on how to resolve problems with family and friends.  They engage children in community service and other activities that help build good behaviors and civic involvement.
• “Hang out” with kids. Mentors and kids may visit a museum, play a sport or go to a library.  These times allow children to open up and just be themselves.  They also engage children’s minds and bodies and shape their lifelong interests.

Friends is indeed “changing the game.”  Judy Stavisky shared six years of results from the longest standing site in Portland:

• 85 percent earned a high school diploma or GED, far higher than the national graduation rate of 69 percent.
• 95 percent remained free of the juvenile justice system, even though at least 60 percent have one parent who has been incarcerated.

Judy Stavisky describes Friends as wrapping its long arms around children and not letting go for 12 years. Kirp told Bob Edwards, that while the nation is facing seemingly intractable problems, there are programs that work and have the data to demonstrate their outcomes. Friends of the Children is one of those rare programs that invests in children early on and sticks with them, through thick and thin.