Posted by jmeyer on October 20, 2022
Decades of research have documented that youth and adolescents who have a mentor are less likely to skip school, more likely to hold leadership positions, and are more likely to volunteer. The impact mentoring has on children can positively affect them for the rest of their lives, but there is a gap. Millions of youth across America would benefit from a relationship with a mentor or trusted non-parental adult, but don’t have access to this type of person in their lives. More mentoring programs are needed to empower youth and positively impact the community.
Decades of research have documented that youth and adolescents who have a mentor are less likely to skip school, more likely to hold leadership positions, and are more likely to volunteer. The impact mentoring has on children can positively affect them for the rest of their lives, but there is a gap. Millions of youth across America would benefit from a relationship with a mentor or trusted non-parental adult, but don’t have access to this type of person in their lives. More mentoring programs are needed to empower youth and positively impact the community.
When you have determined that your community lacks a mentoring program and needs one, there are many decisions to make. One of the first decisions is choosing a style of mentoring for your program. There are three common forms of mentoring for youth including one-on-one mentoring, peer mentoring (where adolescents or young adults mentor someone close to them in age), and group mentoring. Each form of mentoring offers benefits to the mentee and the mentor. One-on-one is perhaps the most popular type of mentoring offered to children and adolescents, and it is the model commonly associated with large national mentoring programs such as Big Brothers Big Sisters. One-on-one mentoring allows for the development of a close positive relationship between a mentor and mentee.
Group mentoring provides mentees with at least one mentor, and sometimes more than one mentor, as well as a group of their peers. This group meets at designated times to participate in conversations and activities together. It is recommended that group mentoring involve one mentor matched with no more than four mentees.
Peer mentoring typically involves a mentor who is close in age to the mentee, but who is at least 2-3 years older than his or her mentee, who is matched with a younger peer to do structured activities together. Some school-based mentoring programs utilize this form of mentoring where, for example, high school students serve as mentors to middle school students.
Think about the population of youth you want to serve, and which style of mentoring would benefit these youth the most.
Regardless of the style you choose for your program, if the mentoring relationship is the primary mechanism of influence on the mentee, then there are mentoring best practice standards and guidelines you should follow. One of the most useful resources for learning about these mentoring best practices and standards is MENTOR’s Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring, 4th Edition (EEPM). Using the program practices highlighted in the EEPM has been found to be associated with longer lasting mentoring relationships. The EEPM includes program practices for six core standards for mentoring relationships:
Following the EEPM can guide your mentoring program in creating research- and practitioner-informed practices that support the beginning of mentoring relationships, sustain the (hopefully) long middle, and promote coming to a healthy end to the relationship when the time comes. Researchers at Mentoring Central have been studying the standards outlined in the EEPM, documenting their value and utility in promoting high-quality and long-lasting mentoring relationships.
Finding dedicated and passionate volunteer mentors can be a challenge, but starting with small, realistic goals can help your new mentoring program thrive. Reach out to your personal network of friends, family, coworkers, and other social circles such as your place of worship or neighborhood to see if they would be willing to mentor. The population and demographic you intend to serve can help influence who and where you look for mentors. Social ads, television ads, and word-of-mouth can all help people get in the door.
No child is the same, and neither are mentors. Having a variety of mentors from different backgrounds, religions, races, genders, and hobbies will help your program find the right fit for the needs and goals of the mentees you serve. The EEPM strongly suggests that mentoring programs require criminal background checks of and references for their mentors to try to ensure that their mentees are safe with their mentors. Once you have recruited and trained your mentors, they’ll need to understand what your mentoring style should look like.
Training on the fundamentals of mentoring is crucial for starting a mentoring program for youth. Mentoring Central created the first and only evidence-based mentor training program. Aligned with the Training benchmarks of the EEPM, Mentoring Central’s foundational courses guide mentors, mentees, staff, and parents through the essential topics they need to know before and after they begin their participation in a mentoring relationship. There are both online and in-person options for conducting training, allowing mentors and mentoring programs to determine what presentation style works best for them.
Some mentoring programs have reported that the ease of using online training for preparing their mentors is best— because it allows mentors to receive training from wherever they are. During the pandemic and post-pandemic world, this model of providing access to on demand, online training has risen in popularity, along with virtual mentoring. In a research study evaluating the effectiveness of the Preparing for Mentoring online mentor training, 93% of mentors reported they would recommend it to others, and 98% report being excited to start mentoring after the online courses.
Online training followed by in-person training is an ideal pre-match training package, because it helps your program meet the two-hour, in-person training minimum recommended in the Training Standard of the EEPM. By completing the online training first, mentors are more likely to come to the in-person training with accurate expectations and knowledge so they can deepen their knowledge and skills through in-person discussions and activities. Mentoring Central’s Building Your Mentoring Skills in-person training course provides materials to conduct a two hour in-person training to help mentors complete their preparation so they can begin to effectively interact with and support their mentee. During this more advanced skills workshop, mentors have the opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills they learned in the online Preparing for Mentoring program to solving examples of real-world issues that might arise in the course of their mentoring relationship.
Ensuring volunteers have the right guidance when it comes to mentoring can set up matches for success from the start. By investing in training for volunteers, the community you serve directly benefits. You cannot build a mentoring program quickly. It takes time and dedication. Start small and create a high-quality program that fits the needs of your community. When starting a mentoring program becomes overwhelming, Mentoring Central can provide technical assistance from the very beginning. We offer assistance in developing programs and program goals, and Mentoring Central is one of the best resources available for mentoring programs. When it is time to train mentors, mentees, staff, and parents, there are a variety of online, asynchronous training options we offer.
Contact Mentoring Central for more information on how to start a mentoring program.