Program Components

You've prepared the groundwork for a quality mentoring program by understanding the general concept of mentoring. You've assembled a strong infrastructure to base your quality mentoring program on. Now it's time to construct the "building" itself: it's time to create your quality mentoring program.

Your mentoring program consists of more than the mentor-mentee matches. If you think of the matches as the program's finished product, then what are the specific supplies that go into constructing that end product? The "building materials" that you need include several essential program components that together make up a quality mentoring program.

The components of a quality mentoring program include such elements as:

• Recruitment
• Screening
• Training and orientation
• The acceptance decision
• Matching
• Activities
• Ongoing support and monitoring
• Closure.

Using these supplies to build or improve your program can help to create desirable outcomes for your matches and your organization. Even if you use all these high quality building materials, though, your mentoring program will not be 100% storm proof. There are no ironclad guarantees that every young person will have a positive experience, that an abuser will not get through your door, or that other problems will not occur. So make sure these components are part of your program … they are the best we have. But always be vigilant and never assume that they eliminate all risk.

Let's look at these program components in more detail. We'll start by examining recruitment.

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