January was , as President Barack Obama recognized on January 3. Next week we celebrate . The notion of 鈥渕entor,鈥� and of one imparting wisdom to others, has its origins in Greek Mythology. It has long been a relationship dynamic that has been promoted, studied, arranged, and challenged over many years. Formal mentoring programs have been a regular and consistent strategy for engagement and relationship building in the youth development field and regularly a human resources approach used in non-profit and private business. And .
However, there is also great potential in the more informal ways we mentor. It is interesting that when surveyed about school, out-of-school time, and summer program experiences youth consistently express a desire for more opportunities for leadership and responsibility. We underutilize the natural dynamic and model of cross-age grouping. Across the spectrum both in academic content and enrichment activities, can be an empowering and nurturing experience for both. We seem to embrace cross-age group more naturally in sports than many other settings. I was interested to observe the placement of high school students (with some training and supervision) as coaches at my younger daughter鈥檚 pick-up soccer tournament in the fall. The opportunity for the older girls to share relevant 鈥渙n the field experience鈥� and for the younger girls
to have a more accessible image of where practice and commitment could get them was inspirational. It鈥檚 more than just the final score.
Encouraging these connections for young people in our daily work without having to be derailed by the tasks involved in more formal mentoring programs (and quality mentoring does require careful and plan full work), might allow us to exploit some of the natural interests of younger youth to learn from and older youth to lead each other.
Georgia Hall, Ph.D., is a senior research scientist at the National Institute for Out-of-School Time at the , , who specializes in research and evaluation on youth development programs.