January is National Mentoring Month—a yearly reminder that none of us does life alone. We are each shaped by the people who have poured into us, both our chosen family and our birth family. This month, we raise awareness about the importance of mentorship and celebrate its impact. Too often, however, the conversation focuses solely on individual or one-on-one mentoring. But the times we’re in demand more—from individuals and from the collective.
America is still reckoning with the aftershocks of the pandemic, alongside a steady drumbeat of crises. In 2025, the country experienced frequent natural weather-related disasters, continued violence on K-12 and college campuses, and widespread economic instability, including unexpected layoffs. While individuals suffered, the nation absorbed the cumulative impact. In many ways, we are seeing what happens when systems strain and communities are left to carry the weight. The past few weeks have sharpened our belief that our lives are defined by our relationships and the courage to show up for one another. The belief that we achieve anything alone is deeply misleading. For the country to begin to heal, we must enter a season of intentionality—something revolutionary disguised as ordinary.
The Case for Collective Mentoring
Traditional mentoring focuses on individual relationships: one mentor, one mentee, measurable outcomes. But what happens when entire communities need mentoring? What does it look like to build systems that guide, support, and develop people collectively?
Consider these questions: What role does public policy play in collective mentoring? Ensuring families have access to affordable childcare and housing, quality healthcare and schools require community engagement and a commitment to care. How do communities help families navigate an eroding social safety net? How do we recreate city, suburban, and rural areas policies, and institutions that act as mentors to families navigating systems that historically are not designed to meet their needs?
Mentoring isn’t just about one relationship. It’s about many relationships woven together with intention. It’s voting. It’s donating with our time, talents and values. Being willing to show up and be vocal as we witness how increasingly expensive it is to be poor—or simply different. This reciprocity shifts mentoring from charity to community—from doing for to building with.
Building an Ecosystem of Mentorship
In The Power of Presence: Be a Voice in Your Child’s Ear Even When You’re Not With Them, Joy Thomas Moore reminds us that mentoring isn’t about finding one perfect person to guide us through life. It’s about building an ecosystem of relationships, each serving a specific purpose, each bending time toward both who we want to become as individuals and the types of communities we want to live in.
Here’s what that ecosystem looks like in practice:
- Define relationships around tangible goals. Build relationships based on shared interests, allowing people outside your family to value your talents. These aren’t generic “role models”—they’re people who see specific gifts in you and help develop them.
- Be clear about roles. As a parent, your job is to supervise interactions and provide support. The mentor’s job is to provide direction and advice. You may need to practice ceding involvement in your child’s interests to their mentors while keeping tabs on the big picture. It’s a delicate balance—trusting others while remaining your child’s primary influence.
- Identify mentors intentionally. An effective mentor should share your interests and your values. Professional organizations, religious communities, universities, and neighborhood groups are all good sources. What matters most is assessing early whether this person will amplify the values you’re already working to instill.
- Teach that mentoring is reciprocal. If a mentor-mentee relationship is to endure, both parties must realize their skills, time, or talents will eventually become useful to the other. Relationships are give-and-take. Even something as simple as helping a mentor with social media or research teaches us to offer our gifts in the same unselfish way our mentors have offered theirs.
From Individual Impact to Collective Change
This framework—building ecosystems, defining roles, ensuring reciprocity—doesn’t just apply to raising children. It applies to building communities.
What if we approached public policy with the same intentionality we bring to mentoring our children? What if corporations asked not just “How do we support individual employees?” but “How do we mentor entire communities toward economic mobility?” What if states helped design infrastructure, schools, and social services as collective mentors—systems that see potential as gifts, provide direction, and create reciprocal relationships?
National Mentoring Month invites us to ask: Are we mentoring just individuals, or are we mentoring the communities we hope to see?
We are in this together and yes, community is a verb.
Joy Thomas Moore, Peabody Award winner and Chastity Lord, President & CEO of Jeremiah Program are partnering for SummitX 2026, a virtual half-day convening that is mobilizing thousands of single moms from across the country for a high-energy experience rooted in the power of mentoring and sisterhood.