What is mentoring?
"Mentoring is to support and encourage people to manage their own learning in order that they may maximise their potential, develop their skills, improve their performance and become the person they want to be."
Eric Parsloe, The Oxford School of Coaching & Mentoring
Mentoring at children without poverty provides a role model to the parent(s). It provides the parent(s) a mentor, who can share ideas, assist with problems, model behavior and be a friend. This is important for at risk or homeless families, as their existing support networks are often not a positive influence on their lives.
Why does children without poverty mentor families?
Mentoring the parent(s) in at risk or homeless families allows the parent(s) to have someone in their lives they won’t otherwise have. Someone who can model what a sustainable lifestyle could be for them.
Mentoring provides the parent(s) with modeling behaviors, learning, sharing and someone to lean on to assist with hard times. This helps them to provide this healthy environment to their children.
The mentor can provide skills to improve the parent(s) self esteem, boundaries, support networks and life skills. These are important aspects to improve in order to prevent future derailment.
Mentoring is an ideal opportunity for children without poverty to assist the family to build family resilience, so that they can recover from a setback quickly and move forward in their lives.