Political Quotes

“I rise today to support he National Mentoring Month Resolution introduced by Congressman Tom Osborne. This resolution recognizes and supports the efforts of mentoring programs across our Nation. It embraces the notion that volunteer mentors can change the life of a troubled teen. This resolution celebrates the month of January as a month-long campaign focused on raising awareness of mentoring programs, their impact on our youth, and information on how to volunteer to become a mentor. I am proud to be an original cosponsor to Congressman Osborne's resolution. Both Coach Osborne and I worked as mentors before coming to Congress and both felt a need to raise awareness of the cause once we were elected. Last year, we successfully passed the Mentoring for Success program, which provided money to start up new mentoring programs across the country. In addition, we founded the Congressional Mentoring Caucus, a bipartisan organization designed to disseminate information about the positive impact mentoring programs have on our Nation's children. Mentoring programs offer many benefits to children, particularly as it relates to educating our children. These programs are proven to help prevent children from dropping out of high school. In the state of Florida, we had a big problem. Only 53 percent of our children were graduating from high school. So, in Central Florida, we decided to do something about it by creating the Orlando/Orange County Compact Program.…”