During weekly mentoring sessions, our volunteer mentors help our participating students prepare for college direction and or post high school vocations by focusing on topics such as: Money Management and Financial Aid, Decisions and Consequences, Maintaining Focus and Assessing Priorities, Setting Goals, College Decisions, and Relationships and Ethics. Mentors work on an individual and small-group basis. Mentoring—which matches youth or “mentees” with responsible, caring “mentors,” usually adults—has been growing in popularity as both a prevention and intervention strategy over the past decades. Mentoring provides youth with mentors who can develop an emotional bond with the mentee, have greater experience than the mentee, and can provide support, guidance, and opportunities to help youth succeed in life and meet their goals. Mentoring relationships can be formal or informal with substantial variation, but the essential components include creating caring, empathetic, consistent, and long-lasting relationships, often with some combination of role modeling, teaching, and advising.
