IGNITE Peer Mentoring Information

Founded in 2009, IGNITE Peer Mentoring is an NGO based in public schools in the the southeastern United States. IGNITE empowers upperclassmen in public high schools to provide one-on-one personal support to freshmen at their schools. Every 29 seconds, a student in the US drops out of high school, or 1 million students a year. One-third of those students are ninth graders. This is due to the various new challenges and responsibilities facing freshmen in high school. Research indicates that school engagement - an attribute highly related to social engagement and feelings of belonging at school - is highly predictive of dropping out even controlling for academic and behavioral history. Finally, older peers - upperclassmen - are actually the best positioned people to reach out to these freshmen, as adolescents tend to look to peers just a bit older than them for guidance during times of transition. IGNITE's mission is twofold: to provide social and personal support to these ninth grade students during a vulnerable transition time so that they feel more comfortable and are less likely to dropout out/ be retained, and to train upperclassmen to be leaders and changemakers in their communities. In five years, IGNITE has empowered over 1,000 upperclassmen volunteers to support over 1,000 freshmen in Florida and North Carolina. IGNITE is presently expanding to more schools in the southeast US.