2015 Mentor Manual Welcome Mentors... 2 Recruitment and Selection...2 Mentor Roles in the Youthlinc Service Year...2 Relationship of the Mentor to student committee members... 3 Collaboration between Mentors & Alum Leaders... 3 Duties of the Mentor... 3 Committee Work... 4 12 Tips to be a Quality Mentor... 5 Evaluation Questions... 7 Mentor Expectations Form... 8 Involvement of a Medical Mentor Form... 9 1 P a g e
Welcome Mentors Thank you for your desire to be a Youthlinc Mentor! You are embarking on a service journey that will shape the lives of young people on your team and change your life in positive ways. Your mentorship and guidance is a critical component in achieving Youthlinc s mission to create lifetime humanitarians. Youthlinc is a student service leadership program. It is through the guidance of our adult leaders and alums that student participants assume leadership roles, grapple with how to set and accomplish goals, plan and execute projects, learn to cooperate and communicate with fellow team members, and ultimately, gain confidence in their ability to make a positive difference whether locally or across the globe. Youthlinc could not offer students these invaluable experiences, and thus achieve our mission, without quality mentors. So we rely on you to be guides and cheerleaders to the students on your teams as they complete the Youthlinc Service Year. We hope this document can be instructive in how to best guide students, encourage lifetime humanitarians, and allow everyone to have an outstanding service experience. Recruitment and Selection Mentors: Each year, adults from various professional backgrounds apply to be Youthlinc mentors. Youthlinc seeks out individuals of high moral character who have interest in and/or experience mentoring young people, individuals who can be flexible, work well in groups, and are good at communication, organizing information, delegating tasks, and allowing others to develop their leadership potential. On each team, there are 6-8 mentors. As part of the application process, mentors sign an expectation form (at the end of this manual), and agree to attend General Orientation and monthly team meetings until the team s departure for their international service trip. Mentor Roles in the Youthlinc Service Year As the Youthlinc mission is to create lifetime humanitarians, every aspect of our programs must be geared toward that goal. The strategies we use to accomplish our mission are based in educational and service learning research, strategies which create ownership of activities, engender leadership, enable cooperative learning, and require mentoring of our student participants. Click here for more information about our strategies. During the Service Year-- November through the team s return from the international service site our mentors participate in the following ways: 1. Attend mandatory monthly Team and Mentor meetings with all the team members to plan and prepare for the trip. Monthly meetings are scheduled one hour before the team meetings, and cover the many details of the local and international projects and mentorship. Make every effort to be at these meetings, with your concerns, questions, ideas and feedback. 2. Guide preparations for the international site. Each Youthlinc Service Year team encompasses the following committees for international service: Education, Community Health, Business, Vocational Training, Cultural Exchange. Every team member works on construction or renovation projects in country. Click here for more thorough descriptions of our committees. Each committee is led by a mentor, assisted by an Alum Leader a student who has participated in the Service Year before, perhaps on the committee and perhaps who has traveled to the specific international site. Mentors and Alum Leaders should not do the committee s work. Rather, they should provide guidance and encouragement as students take ownership of their work. Read the Committee Work section on page seven for specific advice. 3. Support the Team Leader in ensuring a safe, positive atmosphere and by encouraging students to respect Youthlinc leaders and policies. This also includes being a role model of service and cordial professionalism in Utah and in-country. 4. While abroad, set aside time to reflect together with mentors, Alum Leaders, and Team Leaders. 5. Compile a Committee Report during your last day or two on the international trip that summarizes what your committee accomplished, what could have been improved, and what projects would be good to 2 P a g e
consider for the next year. Youthlinc strives to do sustainable projects requested by the local villagers. Talk to them as you work and think of ideas to implement the next year. Include this in the Committee Report. You will work on this with your entire committee and with your Alum Leader. Relationship of the Mentor to student committee members Mentors enhance our teams, and compliment each other s roles. Mentors have invaluable professional, life, and mentoring experience that is not just valuable to the committee and the team, it is valuable to the Team Leader and the Alum Leader. Alum Leaders have experienced a Youthlinc Service Year, and understand how our mission and strategies are implemented locally and internationally. We envision the relationship between the Service Year team mentor and Alum Leader to be the relationship between a professor and a teaching assistant. However in many instances, the teaching assistant has helped teach this course before, and so is an invaluable resource to the mentor who may be teaching the course for the first time. Collaboration between Mentors & Alum Leaders 1. Speak to each other on the phone or in person regularly at least before each team meeting, and more often as committee planning proceeds. 2. The mentor and the Alum Leader for each committee should individually review the committee report(s) from the previous year s team(s). 3. The mentor and Alum Leader will meet face to face before the team s December meeting and no later than the team s January meeting to get to know each other. a. Mentors will share their experience, knowledge, and resources pertinent to the committee s focus. b. Alum Leaders will share their experience about how the Youthlinc Service Year committee structure should work, potential problems, how this committee planned and functioned in-country, and challenges at the international site. c. They will discuss this year s projects as outlined by the Team Leader, and prepare a list of questions if they have them. The Team Leader contacts the In-Country Coordinator and/or International Service Director for information and reports it to the mentors. 4. The mentor will work with the Team Leader to discuss committee activities that are going to happen in the January, March, April, May (and if the team leaves in July), June team meetings. a. Mentors and Alum Leaders will check committee work, and decide who will follow up with students on the committee. a. Remember, participation on committees is required, so students who are missing meetings and not participating are subject to dismissal. Students and parents of minor students have signed the application which so specifies this consequence. b. Do not let students fall far behind. Alert the Team Leader as soon as you sense a problem! Duties of the Mentor a. Explains the Lesson Plan or other documents the committee will use. b. Sets deadlines for committee work, including mini-lesson plan presentation to the committee in May or June (depending on team departure month). c. Gives final approval of lesson plans, committee work, fund raising plans. d. Provide encouragement and counsel when students fall behind or fail in their activities in Utah or incountry. e. As a last resort, and after consultation with the Team Leader, the Mentor can consult with parents if a minor student is not participating in committee work during the Service Year. f. Provides supervision and safety moments during flights, in airports, and during work and play in-country. 3 P a g e
Committee Work Mentor Manual 2015 Each Mentor and Alum Leader will be assigned to oversee one of your team s core committees. Committee structure exists to reflect solid international development principles, to allow for mentorship, to promote leadership of student participants, and is grounded in project-based learning. Overseeing committee efforts can be tricky. You have to find a balance between leading and allowing students to take ownership of their committee efforts. Although Mentors and Alum Leaders guide and work alongside the students, students need to have as much leadership experience as possible in planning their committee s international activities and fundraising for projects. Here are some suggestions on how to lead your committees: 1. Get to know and build a trusting relationship with your committee members. Learn their names as soon as possible. This isn t always easy since you will just see your committee members for a couple hours each month, but it makes a big difference to the participants if you know them. At your first committee meeting, do name games, learn favorite candy bars, have fun competitions plan activities that allow for your committee to bond. 2. Determine the best way to communicate for your committee. This can be a challenge, as young people are still developing their communication skills. Be patient, and take the opportunity to help students grow and become more effective in communicating with others. The better people are at communicating, the more effective they will be. There is no silver bullet for perfect communication, but here are a few tips: Find out students preferred method of communication (Facebook, texts, phone call, e-mail) As a committee, determine guidelines on communication. Ex: When someone sends a text message, I agree to respond within 24 hours. If students don t follow the guidelines, follow up with a phone call. Even call the parents of minors if you don t get a response: We agreed to X, but that didn t happen. What happened? Communication is important. Please don t let that happen again. 3. Review the objectives of your committee work together. Discuss the needs of the community you are visiting, and ask students to brainstorm the importance of their committee work. You want your committee members to get excited about their potential contribution. 4. Research what past teams and committees have accomplished. Be sure to consult the Team Leader, alums, or those who have gone to the site or did similar committee work. Also, check out the Youthlinc website, blogs, and even YouTube videos to help give you ideas on what has been done in the past. 5. Facilitate the brainstorming of ideas for projects and/or fundraisers for your committee. While brainstorming, have a student write down responses. As a group, determine what is feasible, what isn t. 6. Help define and delegate leadership assignments to every student on the committee and set deadlines. a. What actions are required to accomplish our goals? b. Who will be over what? c. When will they complete the task? 7. Offer encouragement, oversight and follow up with students. Check in with committee members to be sure students are completing their assignments, and their questions are answered. Be a resource to them if they are struggling. But do not take over their assignments. This is their opportunity to fumble through accomplishing goals. 4 P a g e
12 Tips to be a Quality Mentor Mentor Manual 2015 At the end of every Service Year, we collect feedback from our Mentors and alums, and advice for future Mentors. Over the years, we have collected the following pieces of advice which we share with you. 1. Be a good example. Students look up to the adults and Alum Leaders to learn how to work within a team, how to communicate in a constructive manner, and deal with challenges and even failure. For this reason, have a positive attitude, demonstrate your maturity, flexibility, and respect each other throughout the Service Year. Students mirror your attitude and behaviors. 2. Plan, plan, plan. Planning for your in-country activities and projects is the most important part of monthly meetings. But keep in mind that everything is subject to change especially when working with a village across the world. The objective of having students plan projects isn t so their plans are executed perfectly, it is to give them the opportunity to exercise and develop a capacity to lead. Team Leaders will stress flexibility throughout the Service Year, but those comments shouldn t be interpreted as things are gonna change, so we might as well not prepare anything. A failure to plan is plan for failure. Whatever your committee puts into planning of projects (energy, fundraising, a clear plan of action, donation drives, etc.) will pay off exponentially once abroad. For example, if participants don t vest themselves into planning specific lessons, preparing for projects, and/or collecting items because it ll all change in country then they will 100% fail, rather than having a strong base to reassess the team direction when changes arise. 3. Be adaptable! This is the most important part of the in-country experience. Adaptability needs to become the fiber of your being as a leader on the team. Plan during the Service Year, but be prepared and prepare your committee -- to diverge from your itinerary, as circumstances at the international site will often require. A sign of a good traveler is having the ability to go with the flow and the mark of good team players is the ability to improvise, compromise, and utilize resources at hand to make the best of any situation. 4. Failure is an opportunity to learn and grow. The greatest learning and growing opportunities are our failures not our successes. In Youthlinc, we are not trying to perfectly execute projects, or raise tens of thousands of dollars with our fundraisers. We are trying to become better human beings with better skills to serve our fellow human beings. When students in your committee fall short, do not take over their work or express disappointment. Use the opportunity as a teaching moment. Be prepared to counsel a student through a failure so that learning occurs. This counseling should happen as soon as failure is imminent or failure has happened, so that repeat failures in Utah or in-country and in life! - are potentially averted. Do not do the job for the students. It s your role to help the students reflect on their performance, evaluate and restructure. For example, on one international trip, a student s lesson was a complete disaster: He forgot his materials, and his lesson plan was poorly constructed. The group he was teaching had no idea what he was trying to accomplish. While much of this problem could have been solved with more preparation and checking at home, the fact is that it wasn t. Speaking with the student afterward, asking him about how he thought the lesson went helped him realize what he could have done better. The lesson was re-worked and when he did it the next day, it was a success mostly for him, because he learned so much from the experience. 5. Be okay with not having all the information. Over the years, the number one request of mentors to Team Leaders is to know more information about the projects and international site. It can be distressing not to have all the details, or to have little control over changes. But understand that it is impossible for the Alum or Team Leaders to have all accurate and requested information to satisfy the many requests of the team. Team Leaders gather as much important information as they can, but keep in mind that often times the In-Country Coordinator may not be able to answer all of the many inquiries. Just know the big things that really matter are being taken care of, and everything else will be revealed. Enjoy the ride. 6. Reflect and share information with others. While abroad, set aside time to reflect together, and with Team Leaders. Some individuals feel really successful right off the bat. Others feel that they re not quite sure what to do once they re in the international site. Take time to reflect on how you re feeling and share advice with other leaders and mentors on how to be successful. However, sharing thoughts about mentorship during whole team reflection is not the time or place. 5 P a g e
7. Communication is essential. Locally and internationally, there will be many changes that inevitably occur. Make every effort to stay in communication with your committee and the Team Leader as events or activities change on your committee. 8. Empower your team to problem solve. You have a great opportunity to lead your committees through extensive problem solving while in Utah and abroad. Empower yourself and your students to problem solve if there are obstacles. Approach challenges with curiosity, resourcefulness and excitement and don t wait for someone to solve problems for you. Seek information, make observations, ask a lot of questions, make a plan, try things out, assess how things are going, and redesign plans when necessary. 9. Respect others especially the Team Leader. There may be times when you don t agree with your Team Leader, or there might be conflict between students or mentors. This is okay. It happens. Your reaction is what is important. If there are conflicts, instead of confronting students, other mentors, or the Team Leader publically, pull them aside privately to address issues. By privately resolving heated issues, you avoid negatively affecting the team dynamic. Don t undermine the Team Leader. You might be seeing only one or few pieces of the puzzle, Team Leaders have to see the bigger picture. If you have constructive feedback, offer it in private or in a mentor meeting to the Team Leader. But remember the Team Leader has to make decisions that serve the best interest of the whole team and the international service site. 10. Choose appropriate reactions: You ll hear when someone wasn t where they needed to be, who has a crush on whom every rumor will come to you. You ll need to decide what to make a big deal about and what to ignore. Basically, instances of AOL (absence without leave), disrespectful behavior, or vicious rumors (and we ve had fewer instances of these than can be counted on the fingers of one hand) need to be dealt with personally and with the utmost of professionalism and aplomb. Some examples: On one trip, a group of grad students went out to a bar without letting anyone know. The Team Leader heard about it, posted a note on their doors to come see her when they got back. It was 2:30am when the conversation occurred, but the Team Leader stayed calm and simply said, I m glad you are back safely. Do you know that if something had happened to you, this trip would have been the last Youthlinc trip? Word of a rape or a mugging however unlikely -- would have spread and parents would not send their kids. Do you really want the end of the program to be your responsibility? On one trip, a student ran away one night because she was upset by another team member. The Team Leader and a mentor quietly looked for her. There was no big search done because it wasn t necessary. She ended up being behind a building, but it took 10 very stressful minutes to find her. When they found her they explained the stress and worry she had caused. They returned to the group, and talked to the team member that hurt the student s feelings and all was well. 11. Everything revolves around the mission, not you. At Youthlinc, our purpose is to help students become lifetime humanitarians. As leaders, we must place the needs of the students and the team above our own. If you have expectations for the trip that conflict with the mission, Youthlinc might not be a good match. 12. Never, ever panic. Students will look to you to see how to react in any given situation. There is no time to become hysterical or angry even if something bad is happening. A Youthlinc trip is no time to let your personal emotions, problems, pre-conceived notions, feelings, prejudices, or lesser instincts hold sway. Leaders are the ultimate role model for the team for cooperation, calmness under pressure, positive and creative thinking when confronted with difficult situations which will arise. You are an example of humanitarianism in action 13. Support youth on their paths to becoming humanitarians. Students will approach you about all sorts of things, Youthlinc related or not. Or there might be students on your committee who are quiet, or are not fitting in. Do your best to create a positive, encouraging environment that support youth on their paths. Be a resource to them. Reach out to students who are having trouble. If you sense any potential issues with students early on, discuss your concerns with the Team Leader. 6 P a g e
Evaluation Questions Mentor Manual 2015 At the close of your Youthlinc Service Year experience, you will have an opportunity to evaluate the Youthlinc program. We ask that you read through the questions that will be asked so you are aware of what 1. Active participation in the Service Year is critical in ensuring that mentors fully understand the Youthlinc mission, policies and procedures, and are prepared for the international experience. Please reflect upon your meeting attendance, committee involvement, and overall engagement during the Service Year, then rank the quality of your participation on a scale from 1-5, with 1 being low quality and 5 being excellent. 2. How well do you feel the following concepts were integrated into your team preparation? 1 being not integrated and 5 being very well integrated. Youthlinc mission of creating lifetime humanitarians 1 2 3 4 5 Student leadership and ownership of planning 1 2 3 4 5 Importance of local service to our mission 1 2 3 4 5 Effective committee work to plan activities 1 2 3 4 5 Partnership with villages: a hand-up, not a hand-out 1 2 3 4 5 3. Give specific examples of how the concepts above were or were not integrated into team preparation. You do not need to expand on every concept, but we learn from your experience. 4. Please rank how well you feel the mentors and Team Leader did to integrate and promote the following concepts? Delegating tasks to students 1 2 3 4 5 Creating a positive, encouraging atmosphere 1 2 3 4 5 Active communication with students on your committee 1 2 3 4 5 Problem solving with students 1 2 3 4 5 Flexibility in planning and implementation 1 2 3 4 5 Effective supervision for safety 1 2 3 4 5 5. Give specific examples of how the concepts above were or were not integrated into the Service Year. You do not need to expand on every concept, but your thoroughness is appreciated. 6. What committee were you on? How did you help your committee in the planning process? Share your thoughts on the effectiveness of your committee. 7. How did you help students prepare for the carrying out the international projects? (fundraising for projects, collecting needed supplies for the team, writing a lesson plan, committee work, etc.) 8. How did your pre-trip preparations affect Youthlinc s success internationally? 7 P a g e
Mentor Expectations Form 8 P a g e
Involvement of a Medical Mentor Form 9 P a g e