What Is a Mentoring Program?
Mentoring programs are designed to help a young person find her life path and maximize her potential. Some high schools run their own mentoring programs. There are also community-based programs and national mentoring organizations. Mentoring programs pair young people with adults who share wisdom and experience, listen, motivate and provide a stable adult influence.
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Origins
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The original Mentor was a character in the story of Odysseus, by the Greek writer Homer. When Odysseus went to fight the Trojan War, he left his son, Telemachus, behind. Odysseus asked a wise friend named Mentor to watch over his son and help him become a good man and a strong ruler. The name Mentor entered our language as a word for an older, wiser person helping a younger person find his way in the world.
Types
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Mentor, a nationwide mentorship program, defines the six most common settings of mentoring as: schools, faith-based organizations, the workplace, within the community, online or on the premises of an agency in the community. Every mentoring program is different, as are the settings.
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Community-Based Programs
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Most community programs are quite formal and structured. One example of a structured community-based program is Big Brothers Big Sisters, the largest and oldest organized mentoring program for young people in the United States. It was founded in 1904 and operates in all 50 states to help young people, ages 6 to 18. BBBS International was founded in 1998 and is active in 12 other countries, including Canada and Australia. Formal programs such as this provide training for mentors, match mentors with young people and routinely monitor the mentoring relationship. They also screen mentors by checking police records and conducting in-depth interviews before matching mentors and young people.
Faith-Based Mentoring
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Faith-based mentoring programs are usually run by churches, synagogues or mosques, or by an ecumenical outreach organization. One advantage of faith-based mentoring programs is a built-in volunteer base. Some programs include religious tenets and teachings into their mentoring structure, while others are non-sectarian, concentrating on life-skills and universally accepted values. Kinship is an example of a faith-based mentoring program.
Schools
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Schools provide the setting for two different types of mentoring programs. One type matches adult volunteers with students. The other matches older students with younger students. The student-to-student programs are particularly successful at encouraging young people who have difficulties adjusting to new academic environments, such as transferring to a new school, or starting middle school, high school or college.
Workplace Mentoring Programs
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Workplace mentoring programs for young people are designed to give the student a chance to connect with a mentor or mentors in fields she is considering for her future career. These programs might be organized by schools, companies or local business or service organizations such as Rotary International or a local chamber of commerce.
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