Youth Mentoring training schedule for remainder of 2023 - register online now!

1 x Foundation Skills workshops | 3 x Quality Relationships in Youth Mentoring workshops

Foundational Skills Programme (MentorPlus)

Click on this link to find out more about this workshop: MentorPlus

Quality Relationships in Youth Mentoring

This 1 day Workshop is focused on the art of forming and maintaining relationships with young people in mentoring. You will learn more about effective mentoring; specialised skills to build relationships with young people; new frameworks, research and skills to strengthen quality mentoring relationships, suitable for all levels of mentoring programme delivery, including coordinators, teachers, mentors, youth workers and volunteers, and much much more …. 

Click on this link to find out more about this workshop: QualityRelationships

Training schedule - register online now!

Here are the workshop dates. Places are limited so don't delay, register today!

Recognition in the King’s Birthday Honours list

It was something special to see youth mentoring recognised in the recent King's Birthday Honours list.

Ms Ann Dunphy , Chair of NZYMN, was acknowledged as a Member of the NZ Order of Merit (MNZM). The citation highlights her work as a leading educator and her long service in the drive to promote effective and safe mentoring in Aotearoa. Ann is taking this opportunity to spread the good word about intentional youth mentoring and the value of NZYMN.

We also acknowledge our good friend and facilitator Rod Baxter has been awarded an Officer of NZ Order of Merit (ONZM). This recognises his long service in supporting youth and youth workers. It also recognises his current work as CEO of the Prince’s Trust Aotearoa.

This year's Honours list also acknowledges the work of a former NZYMN trustee Frank Solomon and his wife Judy. Although this citation focusses on their current work in age care, we know that Frank and Judy were pivotal in the establishment of the Solomon Group, a group of training establishments that help youth transition from school to work. 

Congratulations and thank you for your outstanding mahi and dedication.

Ten pieces of advice for the teachers of young brown scholars, by Dr Michelle Johansson

1. Raise the bar. Don't dumb it down because they are brown, respect them enough to expect their best, and when they bring to you less, say THIS is not good enough, not YOU are not good enough. They've been told that enough and it's rough and they're tough, but the stuff that they're made of is enough.

2. BELIEVE unfailingly in their limitless potential. They will look in your eyes and know if you are lying.

3. Feed them. Literally. Feed them. Feed their minds, feed their mouths and feed their hunger for justice. Break bread with them and remember that when you take communion a covenant is made and there was a promise in that supper, that blood shed and shared means sacrifice.

4. Laugh. Laugh at yourself. But not at your jokes. Your jokes are dry but you are funny - And in laughter there's power; and in humour there's humility - and this ranks higher than their academic standing or rank score - it is more.

5. No one ever changed the world by yelling at it. Fear might change their behaviour but respect will change their mind.

6. Know that you are in the presence of warriors. They have fought. There are fighting. There are battles behind their eyes; and you cannot possibly understand the arms they bear, the scars they wear. Don't make the classroom another trek behind enemy lines. Sometimes they need a soft place to land, a safe space to stand, someone willing to understand. And if this is not the lesson you planned? perhaps it is the lesson YOU need.

7. Be the grown up and own up when you're wrong, be strong enough to fail sometimes, to ask for help sometimes. Be the mistake maker, the risk taker, give them permission to do the same. Be fallible, be malleable - take the shape of the tool that's needed coz ako means that if they’re not learning then you’re not teaching and if nothing ever changes, then nothing ever changes.

8. When they rage at you - and often they will coz often they're fill up and fed up with their lives and they throw words like knives at your feet - don't throw them back. Pick those knives up and see them for what they are. Not weapons thrown to hurt YOU but to relieve THEM. They could not carry them anymore. And you? Pick the knives off the floor, throw them out of the door and begin again.

9. Defend them. Inherent in their postcode. You will hear stories of failure that's prevalent in the pigment of their skin and Don't let that shit happen on your shift. It is your duty to tell a new story.

10. Stand WITH them and FOR them and BY them. Speak with them and for them. See them and know them for who they are. Hold them - in your arms, in your thoughts, in your prayers.

Don't let go.
Fight.
Fight for them.
And keep fighting.
They are worth it.
And If you back them when they're 15?
They will have your back for life.

Youth Mentoring Resources - fun activities to bring to your mentoring sessions

When you are stuck for an idea on what to do with your mentee (young person) at your next meeting then this repository of activities is a great place to start. It covers a wide range of areas including: communication; relationship building; positive attitude and identity; culture and diversity and academic support. Thank you to the University of Auckland, the Great Potentials Foundation and the Vodafone Foundation for making this repository of activities freely available for everyone to use in their mentoring sessions.

Click on the following link to access these activities: http://www.education.auckland.ac.nz/en/for/current-students/facilities-and-resources/youth-mentoring-resources.html

International Research from The Chronicle of Evidence-Based Mentoring