by Gabrielle Schrader

Created on: January 05, 2010

Many youth mentoring programs have trouble recognizing and retaining their mentors. This becomes a large problem when the number of mentors decreases and there are no longer enough mentors for the mentorees. Youth mentoring programs need to work on recognizing their youth mentors and making the experience beneficial to them as well. The youth mentors need to feel needed and get enjoyment from this experience as do the mentorees. It is important to recognize your youth mentors in order to retain them. 

The best way to recognize youth mentors is to set up a very basic goal and reward system that recognizes those youth mentors who put in the most time. Another way to recognize youth mentors is to help build the relationship between the mentoree and youth mentor because then they will have a meaningful relationship and be more apt to continue with it. One way of doing this might be to give the youth mentor one mentoree rather than several. One on one development tends to be beneficial for youth and it can be beneficial in establishing a relationship between the youth and their mentor. 

The problem with many youth programs is that they do not foster a relationship between the youth and the youth mentor. This relationship and bond is of the utmost importance. It is something that makes both people happy and it only helps the learning process. Without this bond, many youth mentors will be discouraged because for most of them they are into youth mentoring either for building a lasting relationship with the youth or to boost their college applications/required high school volunteer hours. If they are into youth mentoring for the latter than there isn't much you can do to keep them after they have enough hours. If they are into youth mentoring for the first then you can create situations where a bond might develop. 

Youth mentoring is a wonderful program and a wonderful thing for everyone involved. I wish you the best of luck with your own youth mentoring program. Recognizing your youth mentors as well as helping them to establish bonding relationships with their mentorees will help you retain them longer. Trying the above methods listed will also help you to keep your youth mentors. After all, without the youth mentors, it is hard to keep the youth mentoring program going as they are a key component. 

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