April 8, 2025
Mentoring Partnership, Mentoring Tales
This weblog is a part of a three-part collection, the place we discover constructing a way of group by means of mentorship with our companions at Foundry10.
Mentorship is usually seen as a means for knowledgeable people to information and help those that are newer to a specific journey. Nonetheless, the act of mentoring is just not one-sided. It may be a reciprocal expertise that permits each the mentor and mentee to be taught and develop collectively. By way of mentorship, we’ve the power to domesticate communities that nurture belonging, empowerment, and help — finally serving to youth to thrive in all elements of their lives.
One group that has been a frontrunner in creating such communities is Younger Ladies Empowered (Y-WE), a Seattle-based nonprofit that cultivates the facility of numerous younger ladies and gender expansive youth to be inventive leaders and brave changemakers by means of transformative applications inside a collaborative group of belonging.
Y-WE lately introduced a workshop on the 2025 Nationwide Mentoring Summit convened by MENTOR with foundry10, an training analysis group primarily based in Seattle. For the previous 9 years, Y-WE has partnered with foundry10 to conduct analysis on the impression of their programming. The interactive workshop titled “The Magic of Younger Ladies Empowered: Cultivating Youth Leaders By way of Intergenerational Mentorship,” featured the next workshop co-leaders:
- Fatra Hussein, a junior in highschool in Seattle. She has been concerned with Y-WE since she was 13-years-old. First, as a participant of the Y-WE Write program, after which as a part of the Youth Management Council (YLC). In her first 12 months of YLC, Fatra helped set up a Black Women Matter Day of Wellness after which as her management mission organized a Muslim Lady Day of Wellness. The occasion was so common she did it the next 12 months as properly.
- Indigo Mays, a rising freshman at Howard College majoring in Political Science. For 4 years she has participated in Y-WE applications: Write, Create, Black Women Matter Mentorship Program, Youth Management Council, and Cultural Kitchen. She has reported tales on native radio station KUOW, and hopes to handle public coverage and advocacy for a corporation sooner or later.
- Fatema Metwally, a junior on the College of Washington Seattle, double majoring in Human Sources and Data Techniques. She has been concerned with Y-WE since her junior 12 months in highschool. First, as a participant, after which in her Freshman 12 months of faculty because the Co-Instructing Artist of Y-WE Communicate.
Under, we’ll dive into key insights from the workshop, discover Y-WE’s mentorship mannequin, and provide evidence-based approaches to making a group of belonging for youth and mentors.
Y-WE’s Mentorship Mannequin: A Distinctive, Reciprocal Method
As Co-Govt Director of Y-WE, Reagan works together with her group to coach and help over fifty mentors and facilitators yearly on finest practices for grownup allyship, wholesome boundaries for youth work, incapacity justice, threat administration, creating an inclusive group of belonging, and modeling inventive threat.
Y-WE’s mentorship mannequin is rooted within the perception that each mentors and youth be taught and develop alongside one another. This reciprocal mentorship nurtures the private {and professional} improvement of each teams.
Y-WE practices a research-backed group mannequin of mentorship versus solely one-on-one pairings. This strategy gives youth with frequent structured and unstructured alternatives to attach with a various array of supportive adults and youth leaders. For instance:
- Youth and mentors work collectively in group settings: Youth work collectively and alongside grownup mentors and different youth who provide social, emotional, and skills-based help, together with how you can search assist from others as wanted.
- Youth provoke match-ups: Match-ups are primarily based on the youth’s particular person consolation and wishes, permitting for extra customized steering and particular person company. Mentors often verify in with youth whereas taking part in programming with them, which helps youth know that mentors can be found to help them when they could want it.
- Youth have interaction with a number of mentors: This group mentorship mannequin helps youth company in selecting who they join with, broadening their help community.
“Y-WE’s distinctive strategy to mentorship and facilitation permits for a real connection between youth and adults which stays respectful on each ends. The Black Women Matter Cohort of 2022 particularly inspired me to develop in methods which are particular to my expertise as a Black cis-woman, together with giving me instruments to persist and survive in areas which are hostile to my existence,” stated Indigo.
Learn foundry10’s latest journal article exploring the event of grownup mentors at Y-WE summer season camp, “That is Why We All Present Up”: How Supporting Youth Cultivates Hope, Function, and Effectively-Being of Grownup Mentors,” within the Journal of Group Psychology.