[Kathe]

January is National Mentoring Month in Canada!

ICYMI, MENTOR created an online toolkit — Connecting Critical Mentoring & The Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring — to support mentoring organizations and programs with the resources, scholarship, and practices they need to meaningfully work alongside youth experiencing marginalization.

How do you define ‘critical’ mentoring? What mentoring practices have you found to be effective in your work with youth?

Don’t forget to visit the Mentorship collection on YouthREX’s Knowledge Hub for more resources!

[Kathe]

I’m so excited to share the recordings from our Teach-In on January 31st!

You can watch part 1 and part 2, featuring presentations and spoken word performances, as well as access all related resources. 🖥 📣 📚 ❤

Also, be sure to check out the awesome visual notes created during each of the keynotes by Jean Rhodes and Larissa Crawford! 🖍

Do you have resources to share on critical youth mentorship? Let us know — we’d love to add more to our Featured Collection. 😎

[Kathe]

We’re really looking forward to welcoming you to our Critical Youth Mentorship Teach-In on Monday. (Haven’t registered yet? No worries! You can still sign-up online.)

Get to know our amazing keynote speakers, Dr. Jean Rhodes and Larissa Crawford, before the event.

In this blogpost (from The Chronicle of Evidence-Based Mentoring), Jean explores mentoring in the context of inequality, injustice, and a global pandemic: “As long as mentors can generalize their concern for their one mentee to a concern for children in similar situations, programs have an important role in both bridging gaps in mental health services and catalyzing authentic action and reform.”

And in this video (produced by FLARE), Larissa discusses the importance of having mentors that look like you: “I was at a ceremony and it was told to me by an Anishinaabe woman to approach mentorship relationships by first figuring out what you could do for them. And when I first started offering before asking anything, that’s when I started establishing the most meaningful long-term mentorship relationships that I got.”

Jean, Larissa, and youth programs from across Ontario will be sharing their critical youth mentorship strategies and best practices. What are yours? We’d love to hear from you!

[Lidia]

“To build a good mentoring relationship, just work on getting to know one another.”

In a Q&A with former YouthREX Coop student and NOISE alumnae (2012 – 2013), Maria Gabriela Umana-Peraza reflects on her experiences of mentoring within the NOISE program, and how it emphasized multidirectional learning and accountability among all participants. You can read the full blog post here: https://bit.ly/3tWcZsk

I appreciated how Maria illustrated the need for a mentor to affirm their young mentee, in order to prove the mentor is in it for the long-run and invested in their success as well as their challenges. I also resonated with Maria’s response to what she learned from younger youth:

“Youth want people to look up to and be comfortable with. Youth want people to trust and know they can count on you when they are down because of a situation that they may be experiencing at such a young age.”

This furthers show how relationship building with youth constitutes a dynamic approach built on empathy, respect and structure. In a recent study by MENTOR Canada, they outline the best strategies and practices for mentorship. According to this study, it’s best not to walk into the relationship wanting to change or “improve” your mentee as a
person. Make sure to follow your mentee’s lead throughout
your time together, but especially as you set the
tone for your new relationship.