Watch: Mentors making a difference

Join MENTOR CEO David Shapiro and Monitor reporter Stacy Teicher Khadaroo live on Oct. 20, 2016, at 7 p.m. EDT for a discussion about mentoring and how it can improve young lives.

The national conversation on inequality is long on problems and short on solutions. Mentoring positively addresses many of the snares that trip up young people, including school absenteeism, low academic achievement, and limited social networks.

Despite major growth in mentoring in America, one in three 18-year-olds still say that they had no adults outside their family to mentor them as kids.

How do we close that gap so that every child has one caring adult? How can we make mentor matches more effective? And what do mentors and students say about the experience that could encourage others to form those bonds?

Join the Monitor’s new EqualEd team live on Oct. 20, 2016, at 7 p.m. EST to explore those questions.

We are delighted to welcome David Shapiro (@dshapMENTOR), CEO and president of MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership, who will discuss these issues with EqualEd reporter Stacy Teicher Khadaroo (@StacyTKhadaroo) and take questions from the audience.

We also will hear from pairs of mentors and students who will talk about the transformative power of their relationships and take audience questions. Information about Boston-area mentoring opportunities will be available at the event, as well as a short introduction to EqualEd and how to get involved.

The event is free and open to the public. Registration details can be found here. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. for mingling.

For those who can't make it, a video of the event will also be streamed live from this page.