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Topics:
Youth
Networking
for Youth Builds a Better Future through Mentoring
This broad-based
coalition between business, labor, schools, non-profits, and social
service agencies is mobilizing a wide array of individuals and
organizations to invest in young people by developing a model
community mentoring program. The community is one of fourteen
working with the Pew Partnership for Civic Change, which focuses
attention on the civic capacity of smaller cities. Case
study plus.
Contents
Case
Study Plus: Networking for Youth
Case Study Plus: Adult Mentoring
Case
Study Plus: Networking for Youth
From
Civic Partners, Spring 1996.
Published by the Pew Partnership for Civic Change.
".
. . Mentoring has emerged as a vehicle for translating yearning
into action."
-Marc
Freeman*
Mentoring
has emerged in communities across the nation as a way for individuals
to feel they can make a difference. While the staggering complexity
of urban issues can frustrate the will to act, mentoring programs
provide citizens with a vehicle to connect with their communities,
affect individual lives, and develop a framework for action.
Eugene,
Oregon, is one community intent on reaping the benefits of a comprehensive
mentoring approach. Concerned with increasing dropout rates and
high risk behaviors among young people, civic leaders initiated
a community wide mentoring program, Networking for Youth (NFY),
in 1993.
"We cannot
afford to lose one child," explains Gary Pierpoint, Eugene banker
and chair of Networking for Youth's executive committee. As business
leaders studied demographic trends, the need to encourage the
educational achievement of every single young person in the community
was apparent. Working together, area school superintendents and
business leaders crafted NFY's strategy to mobilize the community
on behalf of young people. A comprehensive mentoring approach
matches working adults with students. NFY creates a community
support system encouraging young people to investigate job opportunities
and make positive life choices.
The dramatic
economic changes of the past decade, especially in the timber
industries, brought home to the community the tough new realities
of dropping out of school. Young people who previously could connect
with relatively unskilled, but living wage jobs, are, in today's
economy, increasingly disconnected and more likely to become dependent
on social services.
Networking's
philosophy is based on the premise that young people who are connected
to supportive adults are much more likely to be exposed to work
opportunities and job possibilities. At the same time, adults
who serve as mentors become more familiar with the challenges
facing youth and how the community can make its young people a
priority.
NFY is demonstrating
that youth development is economic development. The mentoring
initiative focuses on three components:
- advancing
dropout prevention throughout the community;
- connecting
young people with a working future; and
- coordinating
resources to achieve the greatest impact in a streamlined, cost effective
way.
NFY President
Joe Berney asserts, "We are part of a regional economy and are developing
a regional work force. There is a great need to put aside differences
to cooperate, coordinate efforts, and leverage resources to increase
the opportunities for all youth to complete school and connect to
meaningful work experiences."
NFY has
launched the nation's first mentoring consortium, made up of 18
different mentoring initiatives in the Eugene/Springfield and
Lane County region. The ultimate goal of the consortium is to
provide working adult mentors to every high school youth who would
like one.
As educators
at the local, state, and national levels focus on strengthening
school-to-work transitions, the Networking for Youth approach
is emerging as a model for connecting young people with work experience.
The Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce, for example, has established
a clearinghouse of work-based learning opportunities for area
educators, including shadowing, paid and unpaid internships, and
employer classroom presentations.
Labor leaders
are also attuned to the changing economic climate that demands
a higher level of training. Larry Williams, labor liaison with
the Labor, Education and Training Initiative, asserts, "Our hope
is that we can prevent future layoffs by ensuring that people
have a broad base of skills so they can be more flexible to changes
in the economy." He explains, "What high school students need
to learn today is that you're not preparing yourself for one job,
but you need to have the ability to learn new skills, so you can
learn new jobs and change employers if you need to."
NFY is demonstrating
how mentoring can serve as a catalyst for mobilizing a community
to address complex social and economic issues. Networking for
Youth is building a better future for the Eugene/ Springfield
region by investing in the civic infrastructure that connects
young people with adults and gives them the tools to craft their
own promising futures.
*Marc Freedman.
The Kindness of Strangers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers,
1993 p.xi.
More
Information
Joe Berney,
President, Networking for Youth
99 West 10th Avenue, Suite 340
Eugene, OR 97401
Tel: 541-302-6665
E-mail: HN4488@handsnet.org
Adult
Mentoring
Great
Transitions: Preparing Adolescents for a New Century. Washington,
DC; New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York, pp. 53-54, 1995.
Reprinted with permission of the Carnegie Council on Adolescent
Development.
A crucial
need of adolescents is for an enduring, stable, supportive bond
with a caring adult. For this reason, another aspect of social
support that has captured great interest in recent years, especially
for its benefits in communities with very low incomes, is adult
mentoring. A variety of innovative efforts have explored ways
to construct such dependable one-to-one relations over an extended
period of time.
Mentoring
can be a powerful way to provide adult involvement with adolescents
who are largely isolated from the world of adults. It can help
adolescents prepare for social roles that earn respect and encourage
them to persist in education. Elder citizens can contribute substantially
as mentors to adolescents, bringing new meaning to their own lives
while helping the younger generation grow up. On the basis of
this trusting and stimulating experience, other relationships
may be built in the future. However, the mentor's task is not
easy. He or she is expected to provide sustained support, guidance,
and concrete assistance as the adolescent goes through a difficult
time, enters a new situation, or takes on new tasks. It is also
important that a mentoring program be integrated with other resources
in the community. Particularly for high-risk youth, where problems
tend to cluster, the connection with education, health, and social
services is necessary.
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