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The Kindness of Strangers: Adult Mentors, Urban Youth, and the New Volunteerism

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This book focused primarily on adults who have mentored inner-city youth by providing guidance to youth during difficult times. The author, Marc Freedman acknowledges the fact that mentoring is a difficult task for anyone to take on, especially when it involves difficult or problematic individuals, but reaching out and allowing youth to become emotionally connected with their mentors provides an amazing outcome and rewards the mentor for their endurance and perseverance.

The author's background and personal experience with researching the effects on mentoring on youth in America is made clear throughout the book. Freeman highlights his research within the book and encompasses it with a deep personal care in regards to the fate of youth growing up in poverty. For the creation of this boo Freedman interviews over 300 mentors, you people, scholars, and youth workers and gathers that information to examine some difficult questions mentors face nowadays such as; how much can mentoring really accomplish, what does it take to be a successful mentor, and what makes the difference between an effective program and one fraught with difficulties.

The book is divided up into 10 main areas which focus on calling individuals to action, creating great expectation, recurring fervor, birth of a movement, the benefits of mentoring, making the most of mentoring, closing the caring gap, re-engaging the middle class, and reinventing the community.