In early October, Friends of the Children hosted ten members of a Singapore-based mentoring nonprofit called Shine Children & Youth Services in New York City. The visit was based at the Harlem location of the Friends of the Children – New York chapter, and provided the Singapore group the opportunity to witness the Friends of the Children model in action.

SHINE provides a wide variety of child and family services to communities throughout Singapore with a focus on economic mobility, and they currently serve 90 youth. SHINE and Friends of the Children have a history dating back to 2022 when the Octava Foundation and SHINE approached Friends of the Children with a request to expand to Singapore. In lieu of a full endorsement, the Friends of the Children National Board approved a pilot project focused on implementing a modified version of the Friends of the Children model in Singapore, giving the Friends of the Children – National team a chance to understand what replication of the model within a different cultural context could look like. SHINE enrolled their first cohort of youth in 2023, and Miles Allen, Terri Sorenson and Dr. Andrae Brown traveled in the fall of 2024 to Singapore to support the implementation of the model and understand the changes made to accommodate the cultural context in Singapore.  

The week-long reciprocal visit to New York this October focused on critical topics including training for professional mentors; retention of youth and staff, literacy; fundraising, data collection and monitoring; challenges unique to large urban areas; and caregiver engagement. The national and New York teams were impressed with SHINE’s commitment to the model and the quality of its implementation in Singapore.  

“The SHINE collaboration is helping strengthen our shared understanding of long-term mentoring, program delivery, and leadership development,” says Andrae Brown, Chief Officer of Chapter Success. “The visit was a time for us to share mutual understanding of what professional mentoring for youth, and energized the teams from Singapore and Friends – New York and Friends – National.”  

Moving forward, Friends of the Children – National will be working to establish an international partnership framework to guide ongoing collaboration, data alignment, and shared training opportunities with SHINE. In the future, Friends of the Children – National hopes to host visits like this at the National Center of Excellence for Youth Mentoring in Portland, which is currently under construction.