Mentor Program Leads To High Graduation Rates For Foster Teens 

Thousands of families across West Virginia are celebrating happy milestones during this graduation season. So is a nonprofit that works with teens in foster care. 

“This is our largest graduating class of seniors this year,” said Ashley Arthur, the program manager for Mission West Virginia’s Bridge program.  

It pairs full-time, paid mentors in 14 counties with West Virginia teens in foster and kinship care who often struggle because of multiple school placements, early childhood trauma and complex, dysfunctional family histories.  

This year, they served 550 students at 14 high schools in Boone, Cabell, Clay, Canal, Lincoln, Putnam and Wood counties.  

Mentors help the students improve their grade point averages and attendance rates. 

Of the 127 seniors in the program this year, 125 have now graduated – a greater than 98% success rate.  

“Every year, we’ve seen positive results in a decrease in absences, a decrease in behavioral infractions within the school, and an increase in credit recovery, GPA is going up, and we have a really high graduation rate every single year,” Arthur said.  

She also said the remaining two students are both on track to achieve their General Educational Development (GED) certificates by the end of the year.