MENTOR’s Commitment To Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion: Mentoring For Racial Justice Innovation Grants Program
November 16, 2021
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 National Football League (NFL) Foundation via a social justice grant, MENTOR launched its first-ever Social Justice Capacity Building Grants Program for MENTOR Affiliates. Through this program, MENTOR is able to provide a total of $120,000 in grants of $15,000 each to a total of eight MENTOR Affiliates to support innovative local mentoring initiatives aimed at addressing systemic inequities within their local communities tied to education and workforce development and focused on social justice across their service areas. Affiliates are leveraging the funds for significant work that is already prioritized, planned, or being implemented.
Chad Butt, Executive Director of MENTOR Vermont, one of the grant recipients, comments, “MENTOR Vermont is appreciative of the financial support this grant provides to further center DEI efforts of the youth mentoring field in Vermont. This funding enables us to establish a standing budget for a program-led DEI committee. The committee will guide MENTOR Vermont in how to best support local mentoring programs to ensure mentoring is inclusive for all participants, especially BIPOC and other historically marginalized individuals, and to create a welcoming mentoring community in Vermont that is anti-racist and equitable with its resources and practices.”
Recipients of the Mentoring for Racial Justice Innovation Grants and their projects:
GREATER MILWAUKEE – Black and Latino Male Youth Ambassador and Mentoring Program
MENTOR Greater Milwaukee (MGM) will be partnering with Milwaukee Public Schools, Department of Black and Latino Male Achievement (BLMA) First Thursday Mentoring Program. MGM will be working to help train BLMA Ambassadors in the mentoring program to expand the reach of the BLMA Department Guiding Principles work, in particular training and expanding the Ambassadors Mentors to mentor Middle school and Grade school youth around mentoring and Guiding Principles around Socio-Political Awareness, Community and Leadership. MGM will work with BLMA to help train the Ambassadors on mentoring strategies with a Cultural Humility and Racial Justice perspective. Youth will have the opportunity to not only share and create the strategies alongside racial justice trainers, but then share messaging with other students to create a communal voice within the school district, while providing mentorship to other students to empower them to succeed in their academics and community as well.
IOWA – Social Justice Community Conversations and Education and Workforce Trainings
Iowa Mentor will host community conversations focused on advancing social justice and youth centrism through mentoring, designed to network with youth mentoring programs in the Des Moines Metro Area. Strategic mapping using SWOT analysis will be conducted in these sessions to identify the service gaps that exist in serving Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) youth in the Des Moines Metro Area. From these sessions, Iowa Mentor will develop DEI resources to support local mentoring programs in the Des Moines Metro Area and partner with youth mentoring programs to engage youth as movement leaders within their own communities. This grant also allows Iowa Mentor to enhance its efforts of increasing the mentoring mindset by training workplaces and education partners in adopting best practices to bolster youth mentoring with a focus on advancing social, racial, and economic equity.
MICHIGAN – Integrative Mentoring Matrix: Life Skills Training and Workforce Development
Mentor Michigan will provide space for youth to explore social justice and equity through a mentoring matrix, Integrative Mentoring (IM.). Integrative Mentoring employs three tiers for reciprocal mentor and mentee learning and engagement, including experiential learning, cultural curriculum, and a webinar and speaker series. The Integrative Mentoring project will assist programs with creating a safe space for youth mentees to express their aspirations, concerns and concepts to help achieve social justice and equity for themselves and their respective communities. Mentor Michigan will utilize the creative energies of artist and consultant Mike Ellison to create, develop and implement the Integrative Mentoring project that will include a series of equity and social justice presentations for mentor programs, mentors, and mentees.
NEWARK – Newark Boys and Young Men of Color (BYMOC) Mentoring Project
MENTOR Newark will partner with two Newark Board of Education high schools (Eagle Academy for Young Men of Newark, Newark Leadership Academy) to create the Newark Boys and Young Men of Color (BYMOC) Mentoring Project. Schools will partner with MENTOR Newark and other local stakeholders to identify 16 10th grade students to participate in the project. As part of a broader strategy with the Newark Board of Education, MENTOR Newark will also provide extensive professional development, training and technical assistance in creating a “self-sustaining” mentoring strategy for the district that includes introducing the “relationship school model” in the city of Newark.
INDIANA – Expanding My Brother’s Keeper Trainings, Data, and Support
MENTOR Indiana, hosted by Indiana Youth Institute, will work with My Brother’s Keeper communities to provide trainings, data, and support to help drive positive changes in the lives of boys of color. Through this work, program participants will better be equipped to identify key indicators for determining success, analyze data for patterns of disparities, and build shared understanding across sectors, all part of the Eight Elements of Success in the MBK’s Equity Framework. In addition, MBK communities will work together and locally to share and use relevant data and resources to improve practices and decision-making to ensure boys of color have equitable opportunities to thrive.
SOUTHWEST PENNSYLVANIA – DEI Professional Development and Board Task Force
Over the past year, the Mentoring Partnership of Southwest Pennsylvania has undertaken a more intentional commitment around education and awareness of racial equity and would like to continue this and complete an organization-wide review/revision of their policies, practices and services. Their project will include professional development and education for staff, board, and network including continued education; gathering feedback from their network of mentoring providers on their current DEI efforts; and the launch of a Task Force of the Board to review and develop strategic objectives to advance their DEI efforts. They will draw on internal and external (consultant) leadership to help them continue to learn and ensure that they integrate DEI throughout all aspects of their strategic plan, goals, mission and more.
VERMONT – Mentoring Program DEI Committee and Critical Mentoring Framework
In collaboration with youth mentoring programs and other community partners that are doing parallel work, MENTOR Vermont will establish a program-led DEI committee that will collaborate closely with a DEI consultant to define the committee’s role, determine how to best represent all stakeholders (with a focus on youth and BIPOC voices), share DEI resources, and develop and implement DEI trainings and events to support the field. Additionally, MENTOR Vermont will pursue a new missioning and visioning process, develop a detailed internal history of MENTOR Vermont’s previous DEI work, and evaluate and adjust policies, marketing initiatives, and materials to better recruit and support mentors and mentees from traditionally marginalized populations and re-center the work through a “Critical Mentoring” framework.
RHODE ISLAND – Diversity, Equity, and Belonging Committee and Racial Equity Conversations
MENTOR Rhode Island is pursuing a multi-pronged approach to engage stakeholders from all levels of the Rhode Island mentoring field in their Diversity, Equity, and Belonging (DEB) work. The DEB committee will include: Mentor Program Coordinators, MENTOR RI staff, MENTOR RI board members, and youth. By engaging Mentor Program Leadership in our Racial Equity Conversations, we will deepen our shared knowledge, expand our thought partners, and create a safe space for honest and authentic conversations in order to develop an action plan to incorporate learnings into the design of next year’s focus and deliverables for continued racial equity and social justice work.
We’ll be sharing the learnings from these projects as they come in – stay tuned for stories from our Affiliates!