Examining African American male mentors relationships with African American boys: Benefits, barriers, recruitment, and retention

Currently there is a shortage of African American male mentors available to build meaningful relationships with young African American boys and young men. Approximately 200,000 youth mentors are working in community agencies in any given year, yet only 6% of these mentors are African American men. Research supports that youth can benefit from a homogeneous mentoring relationship. Very limited research has been conducted that explores the benefits, barriers, recruitment, and retention of African American male mentors from an African American perspective. Therefore, this research gathers information and explores the benefits and barriers of African American adult males who mentor young African American males. Furthermore, the researcher will identify strategies for the recruitment and retaining of African American male mentors. If we can gather solid information through this research, we can use this material to help organize and create programs and initiatives to recruit and retain African American men for successful mentoring purposes. The method of data collection for this study will be a qualitative Phenomenological research method. In this phenomenological study, the data will be gathered through in-depth personal interviews conducted with adult African American male mentors. Once the data collection and analysis are complete, important themes will be identified to assist in reversing the limited number of African American male mentors that exist