Welcome to lesson two in the Peace First
Digital Mentor Training: Building Blocks
for the Mentoring Relationship, Youth
Development and the Peacemaking Journey!
All mentoring relationships share a
common foundation: a commitment to
healthy youth development. The Peace
First Challenge aims to build this
foundation by equipping young people
with goal-setting and problem-solving
skills that will usher in a lifetime of
productive contributions to their
individual communities and to society as
a whole. In order for you to make a
meaningful impact as a digital mentor,
it's important to first discuss basic
tenets of youth development and
relationship building. In this lesson, we
will define what it means to be a mentor,
broadly and within the Peace First
Challenge. We will explore the four
categories of development, the Five Cs
of Positive Youth Development, building
the mentoring relationship, and the
stages of group development. Following
this lesson, we will continue to explore
these concepts in three discussion
activities. What is a mentor? In purely
dictionary terms, a mentor is an
experienced and trusted adviser.
Mentoring relationships typically pair
and adult with an adolescent, but there's
no official age minimum or maximum for
mentors or mentees. In functional terms, a
mentor is a source of guidance and
wisdom. Individual mentoring
relationships focus on different things:
education, careers, conflict, related
generally to adolescence, achieving one's
true purpose, gaining confidence, and
standing up for your family and beliefs.
We can look to popular culture for
instances of mentoring. Mentors appear
across history, in literature, and on
television and movie screens. Not unlike
any number of ideas and institutions, we
trace the word "mentor" all the way back
to ancient Greece. In Homer's Odyssey,
Mentor is an older man living on
Odysseus's estate. While the man himself
was insignificant, the goddess Athena
used him as a vessel for conveying
knowledge and wisdom to Odysseus's son,
Telemachus. While Athena provided the
mentorship, Mentor lent his name to the
effort. What is a Peace First mentor? Like
all mentors, Peace First mentors are
interested in
providing guidance to a young person or
group of young people. However in a
departure from traditional mentoring, all
Peace First mentoring will take place
online through the Peace First Challenge
website and digital platform. As a Peace
First Digital mentor, you will mentor
young people ages 13 to 24 with a focus
on 13 to 18 year-olds. This particular
swath of young people are starting to
find and refine their interests. They're
beginning to make choices and gain
experience that will affect the rest of
their lives. Peace First digital mentors
will fill two positions. Each position is
integral to the success of young people
who accept the Peace First Challenge.
All mentors will begin as Community Sherpas.
The Community Sherpa mentor will
interact with multiple youth across a
variety of projects. Community Sherpas
will guide youth through the registration
process and into the Peace First
Challenge. As more youth come into the
community and begin to define and start
working on projects, they can request a
Project Coach. When this occurs, Community
Sherpas who are ready for more focus can
fill out a screening questionnaire and
complete a pre-match survey. These
mentors will receive notification of
their acceptance and can begin the Match
Initiation process as a Project Coach. As
you begin to think about your role as a
Peece First mentor, it's important to
reflect on your personal mentoring
experience. When you think of a mentor,
who comes to mind? Mentors do not have to
be formal, program-appointed individuals.
Informal mentoring is useful, too. Did
your mentors include a trusted aunt,
uncle, or family friend? Perhaps a teacher
or a professor? Maybe you were involved
in sports and had a great coach. Were you
close with an older kid at your school
or in your neighborhood? After this
lesson, we will spend more time
discussing our own mentors. Reflection on
our own experiences with mentoring as
well as popular cultural interpretations
of mentoring is an important step on the
journey to mentorship. Equally important,
however, is a look into the world of
youth development. Research identifies
four categories of youth development:
physical, cognitive, social, and emotional.
Each youth moves through the stages at
different speeds and in different orders,
but all youth will eventually move
through all stages on their journey to
adulthood. As youth progress through the
Peacemaking Journey, it's important to
keep in mind these categories and to
plan ahead in case of roadblocks or
bumps. Of the four categories, physical
development is the easiest to identify
and observe. However, the same hormones
that cause physical development also
impact the other three categories of
development. Cognitive development refers
to young people developing their
critical thinking skills. Cognitive
development will play a large part in
the Peacemaking Journey. Emotional
development focuses on a young person's
ability to process their thoughts and
feelings in productive ways, as well as
the ability to convey those thoughts and
feelings to others. Social development
tasks young people with learning how to
relate to others. Sympathizing and
empathizing with friends and strangers
alike is an important skill. For
volunteers who work with young people,
it's important to be wary of falling
into adult ways of thinking. Adultism
refers to the behaviors and attitudes
based on the assumption that adults are
better than young people and are
entitled to act upon them without their
consent. In a mentoring relationship such as the relationship between youth
completing the Peace First Challenge and Community Sherpas and Project Coaches,
it's especially important to avoid Adultism. The Pecae First Challenge should be
entirely youth-driven with mentors
providing solicited advice. You
should view your mentoring relationship as a partnership. A partnership view shifts
the relationship into a circular
approach where everyone is connected, and
power is distributed evenly. As a Peace
First mentor, your task is all about
supporting and empowering youth leaders.
Mentoring relationships are a valuable
component in youth development. Strong
adult role models help you navigate the
four categories of development. They do
not captain the ship completely. When
youth have a trusted adult that they can
turn to for help and advice, they are less
likely to make catastrophic mistakes.
When mentoring young people, an easy
way to both avoid Adultism and to provide
consistent and useful support through
the categories of development is to
practice positive youth development.
Positive youth development is, essentially,
exactly what the name suggests:
a youth development philosophy
that focuses on positive skills and
abilities instead of negative habits.
By enforcing positive behavior, positive
youth development aims to help youth
rise even higher. Positive youth
development is built on five core principles. The Five Cs of positive
youth development are integral to a
young person's success: competence,
confidence, connection, caring/compassion,
and character. The Five Cs help detail
the four categories of youth development.
Competence--the ability to make and
execute good decisions in regards to
social, academic, cognitive, physical, and
vocational well-being. Competence
involves a young person's ability to
address and solve problems in a variety
of areas. Social competence refers to
interpersonal skills such as conflict
resolution. Cognitive competence refers
to cognitive abilities such as
decision-making. Academic competence
refers to school performance as shown in
part by grades, attendance, and test
scores. Health competence involves using
nutrition, exercise, and rest to keep
oneself fit. Vocational competence
involves work habits and exploration of
career choices. Because of the wide range
of competencies, it's important for you
to exhibit competence in all categories
of development. Confidence--a personal
sense of primarily positive self-worth
and self-efficacy. A young person
successfully making their way through emotional development will begin to
reflect healthy confidence levels.
Connection-partnership or friendship
building as the result of successfully
engaging with peers, family, teachers, and
community members in mutually beneficial
ways. The ability to form healthy
relationships indicates that a young
person is healthy, as discussed in the
social category of youth development.
Caring and compassion-feeling sympathy
and empathy for strangers and friends
alike. Sympathy and empathy show maturity
and critical thinking skills and are
also indicators of an emotionally mature
young person. Character-an internal dial
that respects societal
cultural norms but ultimately points
towards morality and integrity. Character
in a young person manifests itself in
social and emotional development. It
takes confidence and competence to stand
up for your beliefs. A consequential
mentor models good character for their
mentees through both words and actions.
Continue to think about the Five Cs
and the ways you can exhibit those
behaviors to young people on the
Peacemaking Journey. We will continue
to explore the Five Cs and the role they
play in positive youth development in an
activity called Unbreakable. the next
phase of this lesson will focus on
combining our own mentoring experiences
with positive youth development in order
to build the mentoring relationship.
Training related to building the
mentoring relationship can be summarized
with a longtime adage: Rome wasn't built
in a day.
Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither
will your mentoring relationship be
built in a day. Mentoring research
reveals a universal truth about
mentoring: longer lasting relationships
yield a higher number of positive
outcomes in youth. Volunteering to
mentor someone, in any situation, is a
hefty commitment. Few youth mentoring
programs match mentees and mentors for
under a year. Because of this significant
time commitment, it's important for
potential mentors to consider the
implicit promise they make. Not only is
it important to consider the time
commitment, it's also important for
potential mentors to consider the role
they are willing to take on and,
alternatively, the role they are
unwilling to take on in their match. Each
mentoring relationship is different.
However, the formula to make them more
productive and impactful is the same
across the board. A mentor's attitude is
alternately the most helpful tool or the
deadliest weapon in a mentoring
relationship. Good mentors show patience
with their mentees. They persist through
difficult times, and they communicate
openly and honestly. The most important way a mentor can make use of their
patience, persistence, and good
communication skills is to help their
mentees set and reach their own goals.
This action is particularly important in
the Peace First mentoring relationship.
Community Sherpas and Project Coaches
exist to provide assistance--not to complete projects.
A large part of successful mentoring is
consistency. In order for trust to
develop, young people must be able to
count on their mentors to be around when
they say they'll be around. In the Peace
First community, mentors are asked to
commit to log on to the website four
times a week for at least a half hour
per session.
Additionally, we ask that you respond to
all direct inquiries from mentees within
48 hours. One mistake will not ruin a
mentoring relationship. Mistakes give
young people the chance to see an adult
model good problem-solving skills and can be used as teachable moments.
Disagreements can be constructive as well.
However, even in dissent, it's important
to keep in mind patience, persistence, and
good communication. Mentees will be
resilient as long as they understand
that their mentors have the mentees' best
interests at heart.
Understanding how relationships function
in general, as well as understanding the
unique circumstances of a mentoring
relationship, equips both mentors and
mentees to build their match on solid
ground. The Dos and Don'ts of Mentoring
are straightforward. Every entry on the
list is taken straight from the
categories of development, the Five Cs,
and general positive youth development.
The Don'ts of Mentoring relate back to
our discussion of Adultism. If you treat
your mentees with the respect you would
afford a peer, it's easy to avoid any of
the listed problem areas. Another useful
thought exercise to help you walk on the
right side of the Mentoring Dos and
Don'ts is to put yourself in the shoes
of your mentee. Think back to when you
were their age. How did you feel when
adults talked down to you, lectured you, or
jumped to conclusions about your actions
and motives? Following this lesson, we
will complete an activity to help us see
the world from our mentees eyes. At the
risk of sounding too obvious, group
mentoring is different than one-on-one
mentoring. Not only do group mentors need
to create a relationship between
themselves and each youth in their match,
they also need to make sure the youth in
their match have a relationship with one
another. For Project Coaches mentoring a
group of young people through the Peace
First Challenge, this point will be
especially important. All members of the
project bring specific skills and
strengths to the group. No one skill is
better or worse than another skill.
What's important is using individual
skills together to achieve the group's goals.
We're going to spend a little time studying
the stages of group development.
The first stage of group development
is called forming. During this stage,
group members get together, but it
remains to be seen if the group has common
interests or motives or skills. They are
merely gathered objects. Stage two is
called storming. The group is beginning
to explore their connection. As people
get to know one another, there may be
friction and disagreements. As a group
mentor, it will fall to you to help youth
work through these frustrations. During
stage three, norming, the group begins to find
common ground and put their skills to
work. They set goals and assign roles.
The arguments lessen as members
become more
confident in their roles. During the
fourth stage of group development, the
group starts performing. Deadlines are
met, goals are accomplished--the group
hits its stride. The final stage of group
development is adjourning. During this
stage, the group disperses or decides to
make new plans. In the Peace First
Challenge, the final stage of group
development would more accurately be
called reflection. After the challenge is
over, mentors and mentees will look back
on their journey and discuss challenges
and successes. We've covered several
important topics in this lesson. We
defined "mentor." We talked about the Four
Categories of Youth Development:
physical, cognitive, emotional, and social.
You've been warned about the dangers of
Adultism in mentoring relationships. You
heard about the fFve Cs: competence,
confidence, connection, caring/compassion, and character.
The five Cs led to a general discussion of
positive youth development.
We then phase into a
discussion about building the mentoring relationship and, specifically, building a
group mentoring relationship. We rounded out our lesson with a look into the
Stages of Group Development. There's
plenty more to be said about youth
development and building the mentoring
relationship. Additional literature about
all of these topics is available on the
resources. Page we will now turn to this
lesson's discussion activities. The fun
doesn't stop after this presentation. We
will continue to explore elements of positive
youth development by completing the
discussion activities listed in this
lesson. Chat with your fellow trainees
about who mentored you. Brainstorm
real-life scenarios that teach the
importance of the Five Cs, and put
yourself in a mentoring mindset by
remembering what it was like to be your
mentee's age. Have questions about this
lesson or the Peace First Challenge?
Reach out to a member of the Peace First
team at pfchallenge@peacefirst.org.
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