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This component connected middle-school-age youth with adults in the community to increase social capital in the wellness villages. The mentoring program had the potential to tap underutilized community resources and strengthen social networks for children, youth and adults. It was intended to foster the concept of “village elders” by organizing and rewarding residents to serve as mentors to young people working to improve community health.

Accomplishments:

• Young people engaged in mentoring programs learned about cultural traditions and values, received guidance and support, improved social and academic skills, and engaged in positive community activities.
• Lead agencies were able to successfully operate their own mentoring programs based on community norms acceptable to community residents.
• Some mentoring models offered alternatives to traditional mentoring and used formats such as peer-led, group mentoring and staff-supervised mentoring.
• Mentoring programs in some wellness villages involved younger children in elementary and middle schools in community health projects.

Challenges:

• The level of sustained commitment required of mentors was a barrier to many community adults who wanted to spend time with youth but did not have enough time to spare from their busy lives. However, a number of wellness villages capitalized on the time that these adults had available and created short-term activities for youth and adults.
• Mentoring models that required criminal searches, fingerprinting and extensive training were barriers to a number of wellness villages. Smaller lead agencies had difficulty executing these activities because of limited budgets and unfamiliarity with the processes.
• Providing funding to the lead agencies to manage the mentoring model did not result in sub-contracts with established mentoring programs. Traditional organizations such as the YMCA, Big Brothers/Big Sisters and the Boy Scouts were engaged in some wellness villages where lead agencies had more experience in monitoring subcontracts. However, most wellness villages used nontraditional resources.
• The concept of mentoring is not widely embraced in ethnic communities. Residents, especially parents, may feel devalued and displaced by a concept that can suggest that they are not capable of raising their children. Culturally appropriate models of mentoring engaged such parents in group mentoring projects based on a premise that everyone has a gift they can share.

Lessons Learned:

• The Foundation’s flexibility with accepting a variety of mentoring models helped wellness villages identify and implement mentoring programs that were suited to the unique needs of each community.
• Better methods of recruiting, training and certifying mentors are needed to serve diverse communities.
• Structured mentoring programs that address community health issues need to be identified and made known to grantees working on community health issues.