The Youth Mentoring Network

Training | Events

Sharing the Kaupapa

Sharing the Kaupapa: Quality Relationships in Youth Mentoring 

This workshop is focused on the art of forming and maintaining relationships with young people in mentoring. 

Workshop objectives

  • To learn more about effective mentoring
  • To develop specialised skills to build relationships with young people
  • To reintroduce and remind practitioners about the Guide to Effective and Safe Practice in Youth Mentoring (2nd edition)
  • To expand upon Section 3 of the Guide: The Mentoring Relationship
  • To provide new frameworks, research and skills to strengthen quality mentoring relationships, available for all levels of mentoring programme delivery, including coordinators, teachers, mentors, youth workers and volunteers.
  • To strengthen regional and national networks in the well-established youth mentoring community
  • To have fun!

Who should attend?

This workshop is for people who work with young people, including: mentors, mentor programme providers, youth workers, educators, school counsellors, pastors, central and local government agency staff and community workers.

Workshop content and structure

The workshop is structured to mirror the typical mentoring relationship journey.

Youth mentoring recognises culture.

  • What are the unique indigenous approaches to mentoring in Aotearoa?
  • What are our cross-cultural competencies?
  • How do our cultures weave throughout everything we explore?

Youth mentoring requires contemplation

  • How do we reflect on our motivations to mentor?
  • How do we consider what young people are looking for and need?
  • Can we name programme aims, goals and expectations?

Youth mentoring prioritises connections

  • How to connect with young people? What works?
  • How are mentoring relationships formed?
  • Can we reflect on mentors in our own lives, and their impact on us now?

Youth mentoring creates covenants

  • How can we co-create with young people a shared purpose and goals?
  • How do we set boundaries and expectations?
  • Who needs to be involved in the relational agreement or ‘covenant’?

Youth mentoring includes challenges

  • How can we respond to defiant and challenging behaviour?
  • How do we avoid power struggles and conflict?
  • How can we refocus, repair and get relationships back on track?

Youth mentoring needs continuity

  • What skills and qualities can we apply as relationships mature?
  • How do mentoring relationships develop long term?
  • What kinds of ritual and rhythms can we create?

Youth mentoring enables change

  • What impact are our relationships actually having?
  • How can we evaluate progress and the covenant?
  • How do we know we’ve made a difference?

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