100 Ideas to Use When Mentoring Youth

Activities and Conversations to Help Your Mentees Excel

You and your mentee have met, started to get acquainted, and talked in general terms about who you are and what you might do during your mentoring partnership. Now what? The most important thing to remember is that mentoring youth isn’t another meeting or program; it’s a relationship. Effective mentoring is your personal involvement in helping mentees develop and become all they can be. Time spent doing things together—a series of “mentoring moments”—is what will build your relationships and change lives. “Layering” your times and conversations is less intimidating to youth than is a Big Meeting.

For list of 100 ideas to use when mentoring youth, go to http://www.millersville.edu/mmap/files/Curriculum/100%20Ideas%20to%20Use%20when%20Mentoring%20Youth.pdf

by Linda Phillips-Jones, Ph.D., Jean Ann Walth, B.A., & Carlo Walth, B.A., M.Div.© 2001 THE MENTORING GROUP

How to Motivate Your Mentee with their Schoolwork

 Mentors to young people often play a role in motivating students to do their best in school. Mentoring can improve mentees' attitudes toward school achievement and bolster their belief in their academic ability, according to youth development experts Gail Manza and Susan K. Patrick.

Manza and Patrick, authors of The Mentor's Field Guide: Answers You Need to Help Kids Succeed, write, "Your belief in your mentees and your encouragement can help them to be more willing to make the effort to do well." Mentoring can also increase mentees' aspiration for their future, and when they have goals they would like to achieve, they are more likely to appreciate the role education plays in attaining them.

The following tips, offered by Manza and Patrick, can help mentees see that working hard in school has many benefits:

• Be specific when talking about school success: turn in assignments on time, actively participate in class, ask for help when needed.
• Ask what books your mentee is reading; you may have read some of the same books when you were young.
• Help your mentee engage in problem solving about issues that arise at school.
• Provide specific help with schoolwork, making sure that you stay in the role as "guide," not "doer."
• If your mentee claims to not care about school, find out why. Does she believe she isn't smart enough to do well? Does he think he can't afford college?

Keep in mind that academic-related encouragement should not come at the expense of the relationship you are striving to develop with a mentee. Deciding how to help your mentee academically and how involved to get will depend on the wishes of parents, suggestions from teachers, and direction from your mentoring program.

Taken with permission from: The Mentor's Field Guide: Answers You Need to Help Kids Succeed, by Gail Manza and Susan K. Patrick

For more information on Kids 'n Kinship, check out our website: www.kidsnkinship.org

Be Someone Who Matters to Someone Who Matters

Each January our nation celebrates National Mentoring Month.  Kids 'n Kinship uses this month in particular to focus on the need for mentors, as well as how each of us –individuals, businesses, local government, schools, faith communities, and non-profits –  can join together to increase the number of mentors and assure brighter futures for youth.

There is a powerful mentoring effect demonstrated by research and the experiences of young people who are connected to a mentor. Mentoring is linked to improved academic, social and economic prospects and ultimately strengthens our community.

Research has shown that when matched through a quality mentoring program, mentors can play a powerful role in providing young people with the tools to make responsible decisions, stay focused and be more engaged in school.

This same report found that one in three young people in our country will grow up without a mentor. Today in Apple Valley, Burnsville, Eagan, Farmington, & Rosemount there are 63 kids on our waiting list who could benefit from having a Kinship mentor.

Mentoring relationships are basic human connections that let a young person know that they matter. Mentors frequently report back that their relationships make them feel like someone who matters in another person’s life.

As we focus on engaging more community members in volunteering as mentors, we will share a simple message: “Be Someone Who Matters to Someone Who Matters”.

Our community’s future rests on the hopes and dreams of our children and youth.

From Kinship Partners blog - http://kinshippartnersmn.wordpress.com/

For more information about mentoring and Kids 'n Kinship, go to www.kidsnkinship.org