May is National Foster Care Month: Help make positive change for youth in care

This guest blog was written by Melissa Chu of AFC Mentoring in recognition of National Foster Care Month.

Mentee Henry, who has been matched with a mentor for 10 years, speaks at a United Way Breakfast about the power of mentoring.

As the only mentoring organization in  Massachusetts to exclusively serve youth in foster care, Adoption and Foster Care (AFC) Mentoring builds relationships and leverages resources to promote long term connections and community. AFC believes that every youth needs and deserves to know that they are valued and capable of greatness and that mentorship is a powerful tool in delivering these basic needs.

Consider for a moment that youth in foster care experience inconsistency in their:

• place of residence, caretakers, and daily routines
• school, teachers, and academic curriculum
• peers
• social workers and clinicians
• sense of safety and well-being

Having inconsistency in just one of these can be extremely hard; imagine having  inconsistency in multiple or all of those areas.

With an average match length of more than two years (compared to the national average of nine months), AFC’s mentors are often one of the few, if not the only, consistent, positive relationship(s) for their mentee.

Having a mentor:

• provides youth with a consistent friend and someone they can trust
• shows them they are valued and that their opinions and feelings DO matter
• empowers them to define and achieve success
• means they are, on average, 46% less likely to begin using illegal drugs, 52% less likely to skip school, and 33% less likely to hit someone

Foster care has been shown to perpetuate negative cycles of abuse, poverty, homelessness, and incarceration. With the right supports, we can replace these negative cycles with positive cycles—healthy development, meaningful relationships, hope, empowerment, success.

AFC envisions a society committed to ensuring that all youth in foster care have long-term relationships with consistent positive adults and the necessary resources to successfully transition into adulthood. If you would like to be part of this positive change, please visit our website www.afcmentoring.org or join us on Facebook @ www.facebook.com/AFCMentoring.

Thank you for being part of the change!

Program highlight: AFC Mentoring

This guest post is courtesy of Emily Heaton, Highland Street Corps Ambassador of Mentoring at AFC Mentoring. Emily answered some questions from Mass Mentoring regarding her program and its National Mentoring Month events.

1. What is your role at the organization? Please give us some information about your program.


Emily Heaton, from AFC Mentoring

I serve as the recruitment & outreach coordinator at AFC, as well as a Highland Street Corps Ambassador of Mentoring. Adoption & Foster Care (AFC) Mentoring is the only mentoring organization in Massachusetts that caters strictly to youth who have experience with foster care. AFC was founded in 2001 and continues to grow. We match youth who have experience with out-of-home care with caring adult mentors. Our average match length for one-to-one relationships is more than two years. We work to provide consistency in the lives of youth who are experiencing transition.
2. Why is mentoring important?

Mentoring at AFC is considered the best practice for reaching an incredibly poignant goal: to provide a consistent adult in the life of a youth in foster care. For many of the youth in our program, a mentor is the only stable relationship they have. Our goal is consistency – we provide stability in the face of chaos and transition. We provide a lasting friendship. We believe mentoring has the power to influence a young person’s life and to act as a preventative measure against the harsh realities for many youth with experience in foster care, including homelessness, unemployment, and incarceration. Working with an especially vulnerable and often overlooked population, mentoring at AFC is not just beneficial—it often provides youth with opportunities they otherwise would not have had, a person on whom they can depend, and a community in which they can participate and feel safe.

3. What did your program do to celebrate National Mentoring Month?

In honor of National Mentoring Month, AFC used its monthly survey (which goes out to mentors to collect valuable match information and data) to ask which three group events mentors would most likely participate in the following month. Mentors returned the survey and voted on an ice skating event. The mentors then received appreciation gift cards, purchased with the help of Mass Mentoring Partnership, to use on future match “dates” with their mentees. This gift card is meant to help offset the cost of regular mentoring activities.

4. What was the response to the event?

I think this event has received a very positive response from mentors. More than half of our mentors returned the survey, and since many of our mentors spend money on match activities, I know the gift cards will prove to be useful and appreciated.

5. Did you do anything else for National Mentoring Month?

AFC participated in Youth Mentoring Day at the State House, and nominated BNY Mellon for the business category of the Ignite Award. AFC Staff participated that day by attending the program and meeting with our local legislators. An AFC match, mentor Justin Pasquariello and mentee Henry spoke at the Youth Mentoring Forum held by MMP. We have also distributed National Mentoring Month materials here at the office—potential mentors have received “Thank Your Mentor” postcards and NMM bookmarks.

6. How people can get in touch with your program for additional information?

Contact Emily Heaton, Emily@afcmentoring.net or 617-224-1302.

Why I mentor: Teresa Herd, VP, Creative Director at Staples

January is National Mentoring Month, and we are highlighting a number of perspectives on mentoring, events, and ways you can get involved in the field. Today’s blog is a Q&A with Staples’ VP, Creative Director Teresa Herd, a mentor to a number of youth. Staples is supporting a statewide mentoring public awareness campaign for the third consecutive year.

• Why is mentoring important to you?

It is important to me to feel like I am doing something in this world that is for someone else. I have been extremely fortunate in my life. I have been supported and loved. So in return, I wanted to share my time, my experience and myself with others who may not have been as lucky as I have been.

• What is the most rewarding experience you’ve had mentoring?

I taught a kid to count change and tell time with an analog clock. He is 15. We had been working on it for two years. I did not enter this hoping for anything for myself. These kids have been through more in their short lives than we will be through in a lifetime. There cannot be an expectation that they will “give back” in a way we are accustomed. My hope is that my mentee will be able to survive on his own once he leaves the system, so I focus on giving him skills he can use…and also try to laugh a lot!

• What piece of advice do you find most helpful for the people you mentor?

It really depends on the kid and understanding what they need. I mentored a college student and we talked a lot about how to get a job, reviewed interview questions, where to look, what to wear etc. I also mentor a 15-year-old who has been in the system most of his life. We talk about life skills. The importance of education. The importance of being nice to people. How to get what he wants in life in a way that is productive. The range is huge. There is no magic bullet.

• What advice would you give to other adults looking to become mentors?

I tell them it is a wonderful thing to do. That it is a huge commitment. The focus needs to be on the child. They likely will not thank you. They may not even speak to you for the first few visits. They will feel you out and make sure you are a safe person for them to interact with and even then, you may not get the rewards that you expect. So if you go in with no expectations you will be pleasantly surprised by the little things.

• Who has been a mentor in your life? What are some of the lessons they taught you?

I have had many. I had a great high school art teacher. She really helped me understand art and guided me into my career. In college I became friends with an interpreter for the deaf. She was 10 years older than me. She initially hired me to baby-sit her 2-year-old, but we became good friends and she helped me navigate through some tough times in school. I have had a few very good bosses who I learned a lot from and a coworker who agreed to mentor me when I was trying to advance my career here at Staples. So many great lessons learned from all. I try to give back whenever I can.

• What inspired you to become a mentor?

I have done a lot of work for organizations and on boards. I wanted to do something where I could interact directly with the people supported by the organization. And I really like kids! I still do the other stuff but enjoy the mentoring the most.

• What mentoring programs have you been involved in?

Big Brothers, Big Sisters, Home for Little Wanderers, AFC Mentoring and The Point Foundation.

Mentoring youth in foster care

The 2011 Northeast Regional Mentoring Conference, Oct. 13-14 in Framingham, MA, will bring together more than 250 practitioners, researchers and other stakeholders in the mentoring field. The conference’s numerous workshops, covering various themes, will ultimately connect the outcomes and power of mentoring.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be highlighting the conference with previews to some of the workshops. This post is courtesy of Adoption and Foster Care (AFC) Mentoring’s Executive Director Colby Berger and Program Director Melissa Chu, conference presenters.

At first glance, youth in foster care represent a population that arguably most needs and could most benefit from mentoring. Frequent transitions in living situation force youth in care to continually sever important connections and relationships.

Adoption and Foster Care (AFC) Mentoring believes that providing a consistent, caring adult mentor can positively impact the world of a youth in foster care.

While more mentoring programs are now serving youth in care, offering population-specific programs remains a challenge. Too many well-intentioned mentoring programs fail to recognize that young people in foster care have different needs than their peers, and unknowingly use a one-size-fits-all mentoring model which has the potential to do more harm than good for foster youth.

Melissa Chu and Colby Berger, AFC Mentoring

This workshop will focus on the unique strengths and challenges faced by young people in foster care and work with participants to identify and enact the types of mentoring practices that can help foster youth to flourish.

Participants in this workshop, whether or not they are directly serving foster youth, can benefit by gaining insight and understanding to the needs of special populations. The workshop will use interactive methods to teach the risks that “best practices” can sometimes add to mentoring with targeted populations, and specifically to youth in care.

Applying best practices correctly could be the difference between creating a positive impact and adding unnecessary harm in the life of a foster youth. Discussion, activities, and video will allow participants to actively engage in assessing their organization’s ability to serve this population or refer youth to programs more specifically addressing their needs.

Foster and adopted youth are in special need of mentors; a committed adult can provide the support and stabilization so needed in a life of transition.

However, the benefit of such a program lies in tailoring training and practice to the needs of these youth. This session will utilize lessons from the field to offer insight to mentoring programs of all kinds. Through this inviting and engaging workshop, we hope to provide the tools which will allow organizations to provide careful and intentional mentoring to foster youth.

Join us at the Northeast Regional Mentoring Conference; let’s team up to better serve youth in care!