Recently in my state many of the youth mentoring programs have had to come to terms with losing their funding. This has led to a number of programs closing up shop and leaving many young people in the lurch. The big issue is that these programs provide much more benefit than they cost.
The sad fact is youth workers can’t do everything that our young people need. We need others to help! The best way I know of is to have a mentoring program. In my career I have been involved in a number of mentoring programs and they were all worth their weight in gold.
As youth workers we need to keep youth mentoring programs going… even if we don’t have the funds. We must provide opportunities to develop our young people and one of the best opportunities is to build their network. To have older people guide them through the storms and stress. To have people with similar interests build their knowledge.
We need youth mentoring now more than ever!
