January is National Mentoring Month, recognizing and celebrating the powerful relationships between mentors and the people they support. Mentors work with people with disabilities in many areas of life. They can help an employee along their career path, guide an entrepreneur through the challenges of starting a business, or shepherd a budding researcher through their first major project. Peer mentors are mentors who have the same life experience as their proteges. For example, they might have the same disability, be a parent or caregiver, or have experience with foster care or the justice system. They use their direct experience to help their proteges overcome barriers that get in the way of success.

Several NIDILRR-funded projects are studying mentorship and developing interventions to support mentors and proteges in a variety of life areas:

• Assessing Efficacy of the Emerge Model: Evidence-Informed Multidisciplinary Care for Adolescents and Young Adults with Psychiatric Disabilities is developing an intervention to meet the developmental needs of these young adults to improve service engagement, mental health, and community living. The multidisciplinary support teams include peer mentors.
• The Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Employment Among Transition-Age Youth with Disabilities is developing Mentoring for the Future, a peer mentoring intervention promoting career development and customized employment for youth who are blind or have low vision.
• The Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Employment for People who are Blind or Have Low Vision (B/LV) is developing Be My Mentor, a flash intervention to improve employment outcomes among adults who are B/LV. This intervention uses the Be My Eyes mobile app, where individuals can request short, focused, one-time mentoring sessions with trained mentors.

In addition to these, NIDILRR funds Advanced Rehabilitation Research Training projects, which train emerging scientists in various disciplines to conduct research and development to support people with disabilities. Fellows in these programs are paired with mentors who have extensive experience in their field and who can guide them through planning, conducting, and publishing their research.

Our Research In Focus series recently highlighted research showing that job seekers with visual disabilities were interested in finding a mentor, but few were offered mentoring programs through vocational rehabilitation. If you are part of a mentoring program, or thinking about starting one, you may find these grantee resources helpful:

• Employment Mentoring Manual is a resource for consumers and service providers who are interested in looking for a mentor or starting a mentoring program.
• Peer Mentoring for Employment, from the INside the OUTcomes podcast, dives into the powerful role of peer mentoring, and explores research on what makes employment-focused peer mentoring programs successful.

You may also want to explore Cultivating Leadership: Mentoring Youth with Disabilities from the Office of Disability Employment Policy at the Department of Labor.

If you had a mentor at school, at work, or as part of your recovery, take a moment to reach out and tell them how they impacted your life!