Support Mentors

Getting support from support mentors is essential in helping you to cope with independent living and is instrumental in creating a healthy and long-term friendship. 

Support mentors can play an important role in helping you adapt to your changing life, helping to support and inspire you. Mentors are available to answer questions and support the exploration and learning of independent living. Support mentors introduce you to good lifestyle habits, listen to your concerns and needs and serve as a role model in your life.

Support mentoring programs have grown dramatically in the past few years. This popularity results in part from compelling testimonials of youths who have greatly benefited from the positive influence of a mentor who has helped them endure career, social, personal, or  academic crises.

Support mentoring programs are created to match an adult or older youth (mentor) with a younger person. Support mentors are recruited from various places including corporate, professional, and religious communities, as well as neighborhood citizens.

Matching support mentors with youths is at the heart of all programs. Matching can be done formally and informally through interviews, personal profiles, comparative interest inventories, and get-acquainted sessions. In programs where support mentors and young people are given a chance to choose each other, planned mentoring takes on many aspects of natural mentoring.

• Click here to find support mentoring programs in your county