This September marked the opening of the Duncan & Cindy Campbell National Center of Excellence for Professional Youth Mentoring in Portland, Oregon. The new Center serves as both the national headquarters of Friends of the Children as well as the Albina Campus of Friends of the Children – Portland.

The newly renovated building is a special place, not far from where our founder Duncan Campbell grew up. The state-of-the-art facility is a touchstone for the power of professional youth mentoring, focusing on four key areas: training and development; innovation; research and evaluation; and thought leadership.

One of the key elements of the new facility is the launch of a new Professional Youth Mentoring Certificate in partnership with the University of South Carolina’s Youth Empowerment in Schools and Systems Lab.

The new Certificate has three key goals:

1. Establish a standardized, credible, and education-aligned mentoring credential for professional youth mentors;
2. Strengthen the practice and effectiveness of professional mentors (Friends) within our network; and
3. Advance the field of professional mentoring by highlighting the profession, standardizing best practices, and differentiating professional mentors from therapists, social workers, psychologists, paraprofessionals, and others.

The inaugural cohort of 25 professional mentors received their Certificates this summer. These Friends and program leaders represented 17 chapters across the Friends of the Children network, with experience ranging from 2 years to more than a decade.

“Professional mentors are deepening their understanding of concepts critical to supporting youth who have experienced trauma,” says Miles Allen, Director of the Center. “The Certificate is opening up dialogue to promote learning across the network, while also facilitating mastery in supporting youth through mentoring.”