Becoming A Better Mentor: Strategies to Be There For Young People

This resource from MENTOR is a wonderful tool to use to enhance your current training programs or share with mentors who are hungering to go deeper into their mentoring journey.

Developmental Assets and Developmental Relationship Resources from The Search Institute

Since 1958, Search Institute has been doing research on what kids need to succeed. We have several free resources available to help you apply what we’ve learned to the children and youth in your life. We are happy to offer these free resources for you to learn more.

40 Developmental Assets Free Downloads - The Search Institute

The Developmental Assets® are 40 research-based, positive experiences and qualities that influence young people’s development, helping them become caring, responsible, and productive adults.  Over time, studies of more than 5 million young people consistently show that the more assets that young people have, the less likely they are to engage in a wide range of high-risk behaviors and the more likely they are to thrive. Developmental assets are a useful foundation for measuring impact of mentoring relationships and programs. 

MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership

The mission of the National Mentoring Partnership is to fuel the quantity and quality of mentoring relationships for America’s young people and to close the mentoring gap. This website is the home of many mentoring resources, webinars and the Mentoring Connector ,  a national database of mentoring programs that allows potential volunteers to easily find your organization.   The National Mentoring Partnership is the host of the National Mentoring Summit , which is held in late January each year in Washington, DC.

National Mentoring Resource Center (NMRC)

Funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), this website offers many free resources and tools to help your mentoring organization adopt evidence-based best practices.  OJJDP is the leading funder of mentoring programming across the country so utilizing their tools and metrics can greatly enhance your organization's grant requests. The NMRC offers free technical and capacity-building assistance to mentoring organizations through the NMP's Ohio affiliate, Mentor of Central Ohio. Visit the NMRC site to learn more and register for this assistance.

Apply to Get Your Program in the Mentoring Connector

Are you looking for more mentors for your program? Get listed in the Mentoring Connector! This free database and referral service is provided by our national organization, MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership. MENTOR and other national partners like the White House’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative and the NBA send thousands of potential volunteers to search the database using their zip code to find local opportunities to mentor. National standards that must be met to have your program listed include: 1) Minimum match length or commitment of 3 months  2)Description of training provided to mentor volunteers 3) Background check requirement for all mentors 18 and older.

America's Promise Alliance

America’s Promise Alliance is the driving force behind a nationwide movement to improve the lives and futures of America’s youth. By bringing together hundreds of national nonprofits, businesses, community and civic leaders, educators, citizens, and young people, the Alliance does what no single organization can do on its own: catalyze action on a scale that reaches millions of young people. Their website is filled with resources and programs that communities can implement to help improve the lives of their young people.Also included are very powerful reports on youth relationships that can help you as you write up grant proposals, many which can be found in their Center for Promise Research Center.

Defining Webs of Support: A New Framework to Advance Understanding of Relationships and Youth Development

The MENTORSTARK   collaborative   consists of a variety of youth and young adult-focused programs that each approach youth engagement in different ways, but collectively provide an important contribution to a young person's social network.   This article takes a deep dive into the webs of support necessary to support youth development and provides insight into how taking an ecological systems approach to resources in a young person’s network can shed light on how to effectively foster and bolster these important resources for youth. It is through this framework that we can approach wide-range funding for all partners that are part of the MENTORSTARK ecosystem.

Chronicle of Evidence-based Mentoring

 This website is chock-full of articles about mentoring research and practices and provides a free newsletter that keeps you up to date in the latest research findings in the field of mentoring.

EmbraceRace.org

This website contains valuable advice and action plans to discuss embrace racial and cultural issues to better serve mentors and mentees.

The Concept of Critical Mentoring

At that national level, there is a movement to elevate the concept of critical mentoring, rooted in the notion that all mentoring programs should work to elevate the voices of young people and that mentoring relationships should be grounded in the realities of the racial, cultural, sexual, and socioeconomic identities of the mentees in the program. This interview does a good job of explaining the critical mentoring mindset. For a deeper dive, check out Critical Mentoring: A Practical Guide , by critical mentoring founder Dr. Torie Weiston-Serdan.

Tiqvah Summer 2023 Survey

Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce Employer's Internship Toolkit

This com prehensive “toolbox” is to promote and encourage our regions’ businesses to establish their own internship programs with the local universities and high school Career Tech programs in Stark County to build these relationships.

Mentoring: At the Crossroads of Business, Education & Community

 This Ernst & Young Report explains why getting your company involved in youth mentoring is good for business from a workforce development, employee engagement, and community social responsibility perspective. The document includes evidence-based practices and stats that can support new or existing mentoring initiatives.

Stark Business 911

 Stark Business 911 is a hub that connects businesses to all of the local resources available to take advantage of any opportunity or overcome any obstacle you may face as a business owner. Whether you have been in business for decades or are an aspiring entrepreneur, they are there to help.