Welcome to Kinship of Perham Area

What is Kinship?

At its heart, kinship is love. It is a state of being, where we give of ourselves without concern for what we receive in return. It is shared time that involves nurturing and learning and protecting what is good and decent in life, if only for a short while. Kinship of Perham Area has the power to build connections that change lives and transform communities, but it cannot happen without mentors like you.

What is a Kinship Mentor?

Kinship mentors spend one-on-one time with local youth listening, guiding, and supporting them in making good choices. Mentors aren’t intended to replace missing family members or to fill in as parents, caregivers, or babysitters; they simply add another positive layer to a child’s life and communicate to them that they are unique and valued by their communities.

What It Takes To Be A Mentor

Becoming a Kinship mentor is easier than you might think and doesn’t require a huge time commitment! Mentoring can be as simple as taking a child fishing or testing out a new recipe, playing a board game or even taking a walk together. Once paired up with a child, you can meet as little as a couple of hours a month or more often if your schedules permit.

Sign Up to Become a Kinship Mentor Today!

Mentoring doesn’t require great talent; it just takes a great attitude! Today, you can make a positive influence on a local child, showing support, helping them build self-esteem, and guiding them toward constructive goals. At Kinship of Perham Area, we believe that well-rounded kids build strong communities!

Our Mission Statement

Building community through the power of mentoring.

Our established organizational goals are to:

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Recruit mentors to be matched with children on our waiting list.

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Build self-esteem in every child involved in Kinship Partners to help them reach their full potential as youth and as they grown into adults.

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Be responsible stewards of donor and community dollars.

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Foster long-lasting relationships between caring adults and children and teens.

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Create stronger, more effective communities through partnerships with other youth serving organizations.

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Encourage the healthy development of children by creating a support system that welcomes children to be a part of the Kinship Partners family through one-on-one mentoring, school-based mentoring, social activities and service-learning opportunities.

Mentoring Statistics

Children who are at risk, but had a mentor in their lives are

more likely to enroll in college

more likely to have leadership roles

more likely to volunteer

become a mentor themselves

More than one in three young people — an estimated 16 million — never had an adult mentor of any kind (structured or “naturally occurring”) while they were growing up.

Structured and naturally occurring mentoring relationships have powerful effects which provide young people with positive and complementary benefits in a variety of personal, academic, and professional factors.

At-risk young adults with mentors are also more likely to be enrolled in college than those without a mentor (45 percent of all at-risk youth with a mentor are enrolled in some type of postsecondary education as opposed to 29 percent of at-risk youth who are enrolled but never had a mentor).

Nearly all young adults who had formal mentoring relationships (95 percent) found these experiences to be “helpful,” including more than half (51 percent) who found the relationship to be “very helpful.” Similarly, nearly all youth in informal mentoring relationships (99 percent) say their experience was “helpful,” including seven in 10 (69 percent) reporting it as “very helpful.”