Mentoring is available for youth in foster care, ages 12-19. Our mentoring program is year-round and has a proven method for helping young people of all backgrounds and circumstances achieve their potential. Mentors offer support, counsel, and friendship while setting a positive example.

Since 2009, Love Fosters Hope has been pairing teens in need of a friend and positive role model with adults of exceptional character and compassion.

Some of our earliest mentors began when their protégées were in their early teens, and are now helping to guide them through their college years. Our intentional mentoring program is a proven method to help teens reach their full potential. The goal is to pair every young person who attends Teen Reach Adventure Camp or Bridge with a healthy mentoring relationship, especially those 15 years and older. Our program is built on a Christian foundation and brings hope, healing and a bright future to teens in foster care.

Mentors serve to enrich relationships built during camp experiences by partnering with foster and at-risk teens to help them plan for their futures, understanding healthy boundaries and relationships, and providing a source of consistency in their lives as they transition into adulthood.

The mentors’ roles are largely determined by each teen’s needs, desires and interests including:

Teacher: providing learning opportunities and offering valuable life experience as a guide
Role model: demonstrating exemplary behavior and offering positive values that will increase chances for success and happiness
Supporter: providing encouragement to teens as they embark on new experiences
Advocate: speaking and acting on behalf of teens and helping them access community resources
Challenger: encouraging teens to maximize their potential
Friend: being consistently available and sincere as well as offering caring and unconditional friendship … and FUN!

Love Fosters Hope developed a book that helps mentors challenge, encourage and inspire their teens as they walk them through the process of planning their lives.

This resource guides the teen to investigate possible career opportunities, as well as identify their gifts, strengths, passions and weaknesses. It also helps the teen research different career possibilities, training and education requirements, salary ranges and job availabilities. A key section identifies obstacles or distractions that could potentially derail the teen from achieving their goals, and once they’re recognized, decide how each they should overcome them.

We want to help teens strategically plan their lives for success, and that process doesn’t happen by accident. The message is,

"You don’t trip over it, or run into it, you plan and strive for the life you deserve."

One of the most powerful gifts mentors give to teens in our program is simply to listen.

Growing up in a foster or group home with anywhere from six to 20 other teens means it’s often easy to get lost in the shuffle, but having even one person in their life who’s focused on hearing them may be the closest they've felt to being loved.

Remember, "To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world."

We recruit mentors year round, because there is always a need for friendship and guidance among foster youth.

Qualifications include:

Age 25 or older (preferred)
A desire to work with and be accessible to a teen
Warmth, openness, and patience
Willingness to listen
Ability to set limits and respond to supervision
Ability to travel to and from the sites of activities
Commitment

Make a Difference

Mentors must be 25 years old or older, and demonstrate character traits of integrity, respect, caring, and the ability to have fun! Our next training date is scheduled for Saturday, June 20 from 9:30am-2:30pm. Contact Sue at mentoring@lovefostershope.org if you would like to be a mentor.

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