MENTOR’s Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Mentoring for Racial Justice Innovation Grants Program

September 17, 2021

By: MENTOR

Our Affiliates, Corporate Engagement

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are values that require deep commitment — through courageous conversations and actions, continual reflections and critical evaluations, and unwavering honesty and accountability. As a servant organization with the mission of closing the nation’s mentoring gap and driving equity through mentoring relationships, MENTOR is dedicated to living these values as we work to solve the many and complex challenges of dismantling systemic racism.

It is our goal to create a society where every young person has a web of supportive adults to support them as they form their identities, achieve their dreams, and reach their goals. With deeply rooted values of equity, inclusion, and belonging, we have hope that with our Affiliates across the country, we can tackle injustices and work towards a peaceful and prosperous future for all of our children.

With generous funding from the Citi Foundation, MENTOR launched its first-ever Mentoring for Racial Justice Innovation Grants Program. Through this program, MENTOR is providing two-year $40,000 grants to five MENTOR Affiliates to advance innovative local initiatives aimed at advancing the fight against systemic racism and inequities affecting youth within their local communities. The grants support projects that hold significant promise for becoming scalable solutions that can be implemented across MENTOR’s Affiliate Network and prioritize effective mentoring for boys and young men of color.

CEO of MENTOR California Marcus Strother comments on receiving a grant for the organization’s Youth Leader Coalition & We Are All Beautiful Campaign: “California is full of EVERYDAY mentors including teachers, coaches, and community educators. Having a completed plan and digital media campaign that is inclusive of all young men, centered around racial equity and schools, will be just one more powerful resource to help move our young people forward.” Mass Mentoring Partnership (MMP) received funding to expand their Youth Leadership Council to allow for more BIPOC youth to become activists and legislative advocates. Lily Mendez, MMP’s Executive Director, says, “We are grateful to MENTOR National for supporting MMP’s efforts to expand The Youth Leadership Council (YLC) which ensures that we center youth voice in the development of MMP’s racial equity public policy agenda.”

Recipients of the Mentoring for Racial Justice Innovation Grants and their projects:

MENTOR California – Youth Leader Coalition & We Are All Beautiful Campaign

MENTOR California will create a Coalition of Youth Leaders, training ten boys and young men of color from multiple organizations across California to conduct outreach and engage a broad mix of youth voice and perspectives to inform the Racial Equity Plan for Mentoring Black Young Men of Color (BYMOC) in Schools. In addition, the Coalition of Youth Leaders will identify ways to interrupt the dominant narrative by building the capacity of black youth to be authentically themselves, realize their strengths, and create a BYMOC: We are ALL Beautiful digital media campaign centered around visuals that combat the typical narrative of BYMOC and are inclusive of all boys and young men of color.

The Mass Mentoring Partnership (MMP) – Youth Leadership Council Impacting Policies Affecting Youth of Color

The Mass Mentoring Partnership (MMP) Youth Leadership Council (YLC) is comprised of a cohort of young activists that engage in legislative advocacy to help shape and inform Mass Mentoring Partnership’s public policy agenda which includes bills that address issues that disproportionately impact youth of color. YLC helps prioritize policies primarily serving low income BIPOC youth, addressing school funding inequities, school discipline, and mentoring for system impacted youth. YLC members are engaged in learning about the underlying causes of the school-to-prison pipeline, work with youth empowerment organizations, are trained in effective advocacy strategies, identify key stakeholders in government, and timelines of budget and bill filing processes. In the program’s culminating event, Youth Advocacy Day, these youth leaders turn knowledge into action by recruiting, training, and preparing their peers for meetings with state representatives and senators, creating public awareness campaigns and planning youth-led workshops. MMP will expand the YLC program allowing for more BIPOC youth to utilize their life experiences and perspectives into collective action and activism and to break down systemic barriers.

MENTOR NEBRASKA – Youth Initiated Mentoring Culturally Responsive Practices

MENTOR Nebraska created and piloted Youth Initiated Mentoring (YIM) and has demonstrated it as a promising model for increasing access to mentoring for underrepresented populations, outside of typical mentoring programs, and in some cases including those with juvenile justice involvement. In YIM, mentor programs provide support for youth to identify and recruit a mentor from their existing social networks. Building on successful program development and engagement of community partners from Black- and Brown-led organizations with deep community ties and culturally responsive practices, MENTOR Nebraska will expand the scope of YIM approaches, create a toolkit with differentiated resources for diverse youth populations, offer technical assistance for partner organizations serving boys and young men of color, and provide a framework for replicability of YIM across the MENTOR Affiliate network.

MENTOR NEW YORK – Racial Equity Framework Deconstructs Systems Perpetuating Racist Practices

MENTOR New York created a Racial Equity Framework (REF) to guide the deconstruction of systems that perpetuate racist practices within the work of the mentoring movement. The REF addresses the top concerns of mentees, mentors, and program leaders and encompasses the core principles of elevating youth voice, deconstructing systems, and creating spaces of joy and wellness that support the social and emotional development of black and brown youth who have experienced trauma. The REF which will be converted into a toolkit that can be leveraged by program partners across New York and with other MENTOR Affiliates to implement practices to foster racial equity. This toolkit will consist of an interactive online tool outlining the pillars of the Racial Equity Framework, training materials and templates for program implementation. This toolkit will be developed with the assistance of mentoring, DEI experts, and BIPOC voices and expertise. In the second year, the REF will inform the launch of pilot initiatives with New York based youth mentoring programs and up to three MENTOR Affiliates to facilitate their own cohorts. The New York based mentoring programs and Affiliates will participate in training sessions as well as round table and feedback sessions to share learnings and further refine the REF.

We’ll be sharing the learnings from these projects as they come in – stay tuned for stories from our Affiliates.