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Friends of the Children
Friends of the Children provides our most vulnerable children with intensive and long-term mentors. We take a preventive, early intervention approach that breaks the cycle of poverty and abuse by helping children in need overcome the many obstacles in their lives.

There are three key elements that make Friends of the Children so unique:


 * 1) We mentor the children in our community who need us the most.
 * 2) The mentors (called Friends) are full-time, paid and professionally trained.
 * 3) We make a 12 ½ year commitment to each child, selecting them in kindergarten and guiding them through high school graduation.

In partnership with schools, children are identified for the program during an extensive six-week selection process during the spring semester of kindergarten. Selection factors include a low level of family resources, poor performance in school, poor social skills, and high instances of poverty and violence in the neighborhood where our children live.

Once selected, the child is assigned to a Friend. This Friend will spend an average of 16 hours per month with the child both in and out of school engaging him or her in a wide range of academic and enrichment activities designed to build basic life skills, self confidence, academic success and resiliency.

The activities that Friends and children do together are unique to the child’s individual needs, abilities, interests and talents. Friends engage in activities with our children that foster social and emotional development, making positive choices and school success, as well as nurture each child’s passions and talents. These activities take place in the child’s school, home and community, and may include working on homework, cooking healthy foods, practicing an instrument, playing sports, performing community service, visiting the library, museum, OMSI or attending a concert. We introduce our children to positive options for their life and extend their community of support.

Friends of the Children was founded in Portland, OR and now has chapters in Boston, New York City, Klamath Falls, Portland and Seattle.

The Friends (professional mentors)
Friends are full-time, paid professionals who bring experience and heartfelt commitment to working with vulnerable children.


 * Friends receive extensive training, supervision, and support
 * Friends are diverse: equal numbers of men and women, ages range from twenties to sixties, and they come from a diverse group of cultural/ethnic communities and life experiences
 * Each K-5 Friend works with an average of 8 children, Adolescent Friend Advisors work with an average of 11 youth, spending an average of 4 hours with each child every week
 * Friends maintain regular contact with each child’s family
 * Each Friend has a Bachelor’s or an Associates Degree
 * Friends are professionally trained and all have previous experience working with youth
 * Friends make a caring commitment to the children in our program and stay at Friends of the Children for an average of 7 years

The Children
In the spring, Friends of the Children identifies kindergarteners from partner schools with the greatest need for a relationship with a Friend. Each of these children is facing a level of challenge at a very young age that many of us never encounter. The family of one of these young children, Olivia, is fleeing a domestic violence situation that occurred out of state. At Friends of the Children we work with children who face significant challenges and who are in danger of school failure, abuse, neglect, juvenile delinquency, gang and drug involvement and teenage pregnancy.

90% of our children qualify for free or reduced lunch 70% have at least one parent with a known history of substance abuse 50% have biological fathers involved in their lives; 70% of these fathers have a known criminal history and/or incarceration. LONG-TERM GOALS

We set three long-term goals for every child we serve in order to lay the foundation for a successful future:

One of the most significant factors influencing a child’s abilities to attain each of the aforementioned goals is academic achievement. Children respond positively to school, often increasing academic performance, when it is coupled with participation in mentoring and enrichment activities. Our program is successful.
 * Succeed in school with a minimum of a high school diploma or GED
 * Avoid involvement in the juvenile justice system
 * Avoid early parenting

History
After overcoming a challenging home life as a child, graduating from college and law school, and becoming a successful entrepreneur, Duncan Campbell founded Friends of the Children. Campbell started our revolutionary new program to help vulnerable children in the same community where he grew up.

Beginning in 1992, extensive research was conducted by The Institute for Children to determine the most effective program model to help young children overcome their high-risk status and realize their inherent resilience and potential. The research clearly indicated that the strongest single protective factor a child can have is a close, healthy and sustained relationship with a caring adult, especially an adult who has positive expectations for the child and involves him or her in meaningful activities.

In 1993, Friends of the Children opened its doors with three Friends serving 24 children. Today, Friends of the Children – Portland has 46 Friends guiding, supporting and mentoring more than 400 children.

Social Return on Investment
In the CYCLE OF POVERTY children are born into poverty, live life in poverty, and bear children in poverty. The cycle of poverty is EXPENSIVE: The cost of each year’s cohort of US children born into poverty is estimated to be $500 billion over their lifetimes. [i] BREAKING THE CYCLE means helping children gain the skills needed to become productive members of society and avoid the traps that will keep them in poverty.

HOW FRIENDS OF THE CHILDREN BREAKS THE CYCLE OF POVERTY

Highly at-risk children who receive 12 ½ years of intensive, professional mentoring through Friends of the Children (FOTC) achieve impressive and measureable results relative to similar children not served by FOTC.

For every 100 FOTC graduates, society gains:

Members of the Harvard Business School Association of Oregon conducted a pro bono analysis to quantify FOTC’s effects on the cycle of poverty. We looked at three groups: 1) FOTC graduates, 2) their siblings and classmates, and 3) their children and grandchildren. The social return on investment (SROI) was estimated by comparing the benefits of those effects to the cost of the FOTC program.
 * 24 more high-school or college graduates;
 * 59 fewer teen parents;
 * 30 fewer people getting an early start in prison and correspondingly fewer victims of the crimes they would have committed.

We combined data on poverty and birth rates with the effects on FOTC graduates to estimate how many children and grandchildren would escape poverty and how big the benefit would be. We estimated a lifetime benefit per FOTC graduate of $971,000. Of that, 33% is due to education, 35% from avoiding the justice system, 26% from avoiding teen parenting, and 6% from lower health care costs.[ii]	We surveyed Friends and teachers to gauge the effect of Friends’ interactions with program youths’ siblings and classmates. The effects are smaller than for graduates but they apply to multiple children. We estimate, in total, $3.4 million in social benefit due to mentoring each FOTC graduate.

The social return on investment (SROI) is 26.8 times the cost of the FOTC program

THE 26.8 SOCIAL ROI IN CONTEXT

FOTC graduates experience greater educational achievement as well as decreased involvement in the justice system and teen parenting compared to similar youth that do not have access to the program. These achievements relate directly to the ability to escape the cycle of poverty. The poverty rate amongst FOTC graduates is roughly 20 percentage points below what would have been otherwise. For every 100 FOTC graduates we, as a society, would spend $5.4 million less on health costs. We would get siblings, classmates, and descendants with better role models and better lives. For every 100 FOTC graduates we produce we gain over $340 million.

For every 100 FOTC graduates we don’t produce society forfeits $340 million in benefits we could have had.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Where did your data come from?

Our analysis of the cycle of poverty relied on government statistics and academic research. Same data came from our surveys of Friends, teachers, and school principals. All are documented in our full report. We used results from our 2010 SROI analysis of FOTC, which in turn used government statistics and academic research for its calculations of the benefits of education, avoiding the juvenile justice system, and avoiding teen parenting. It used FOTC measurements on the success of its graduates in those areas. You’re covering a lot of years. When do the impacts come? At what age?

FOTC’s benefits exceed its costs by age 19 for FOTC graduates, accounting for 29% of the $3.4 million total benefit. That’s because big benefits – avoiding crime and teen parenting – come early in the graduate’s life. Additional benefits, including higher earnings due to education, accrue over the graduate’s life. Sibling benefits (about 23% of the total social ROI) will mirror the FOTC graduate’s, offset a few years in either direction. Classmate benefits (about 18% of the total impact) come slightly later because we looked only at their education-based benefits. Descendant benefits (about 30%), obviously, come later. The large majority of the total benefits (over 70%) occur within the graduate’s lifetime. What makes your numbers “conservative”?

We used multiple methods to calculate numbers when we could. We chose to use numbers at or near the bottom of the ranges that we found. We didn’t do anything based on speculation. For example, it’s likely that there are positive effects of FOTC through parents, lower spending on special-education programs, impacts on mental health and substance abuse, and so on. If analyzed they would almost certainly add to FOTC’s social benefit. How accurate is your analysis?

Analysis in the social sciences is never as precise as in the physical sciences. That’s why we took pains to be conservative in our methods and our data. The conclusion of our analysis is not that FOTC’s SROI is precisely 26.8, although that number is our best estimate. The conclusion is that FOTC’s SROI is very, very far above 1.0, which means that investing in FOTC produces very, very positive results for program youth, siblings, classmates, descendants, and society in general. ABOUT THE STUDY, THE AUTHORS, AND THE ORGANIZATION

The study was conducted pro bono by members of the HBSAO Community Partners program. Listed alphabetically, the authors are Bruce Hamilton, Christine Cruver, John “Spike” Symonds, Jon Down, Mark Chussil, and Sara Crate.

You can contact FOTC at pdxinfo@friendsofthechildren.org and HBSAO at TakeAction@hbsao.org.

[i] Holzer, H., et al., 2007. “The Economic costs of Poverty in the United States: Subsequent Effects on Children Growing up Poor.” Institute for Research on Poverty, Discussion Paper 1327-07.

[ii] Based on updates to the 2010 Social ROI analysis by the HBSAO. Health costs derived from Holzer et al. 2007.

other information
Terri Sorensen, President Founded in 1993 501c3, nonprofit organization website: www.friendsofthechildren.org Focus: mentoring, education, youth Headquarters: Portland, OR