Education
Power 4 Youth Tackles Life Skills With Mentors
Power 4 Youth is a Long Beach nonprofit that has been touching the lives of at-risk, primarily low-income students since 1999. Their mission statement is simple, “Making the difference in the lives of at-risk students through caring, consistent mentoring relationships”.
Power 4 Youth offers one-on-one academic mentoring for struggling students. But the mentoring services are more than just reading and writing. Mentors are there to help with those other challenges. The challenges of life like study skills, time management or motivation and goal setting.
PalacioMagazine.com sat down with Power 4 Youth Executive Director Val Parker and Match Supervisor Samana Budhathoki to talk about their program.
Power 4 Youth is more than Academics
Ms. Parker summarized the program this way, “Power 4 Youth is an academic mentoring program where we match caring adult volunteers with middle and high school kids that are struggling in school.”
They meet weekly at non-school sites. “The goal is to help the kids to do better in school but it’s not tutoring and homework, it’s kind of addressing the big picture issues that are keeping children from doing their best.”
Parker explains that by the time the students are in middle school and are failing math, she believes it has very little to with math. “It could be something as simple as not having the study skills and organization skills needed to excel in school.”
According to Parker, it could also be at the other end, endless struggles with home or living in chaos. “Mentors try and figure out that behind the scene issue.”
Power 4 Youth wants the mentor and mentee to work together on a strategy to help the student overcome those obstacles and challenges “So they can be successful in school.”
Joining Up for Power 4 Youth
Anyone can be a mentor. Match Supervisor Samana Budhathoki is responsible for matching up mentors and mentees.
“All our mentors are volunteers from the community.” They come from various volunteer sites. They need to be high school graduates, be able to pass a background check and want to work with these kids.
“Another one is we do lot of talking to our current mentors and ask them to help us recruit more volunteers that way.”
There’s also word of mouth and going into the community to make presentations.
Power 4 Youth Finds the Mentees
Finding the student mentees is another process. Budhathoki explains, “The students come to us from various sources again. On of the big sources would be school district and the counselors.”
Parents look for Power 4 Youth online and through word of mouth in order to refer their children to the organization for help. The nonprofit also works with social service organizations to identify youth that could benefit from the mentoring program.
The once a week 90 minute mentoring sessions are structured but getting started that first meeting is always important. According to Parker, “We do have a little curriculum that they have when they first get started…it’s exactly like a blind date and the whole mentoring relationship like a dating relationship.”
“They meet, they get along, there’s a honeymoon period, they probably have a little rocky time and then they settle into a smooth relationship.”
There’s fun as well as structured times. It’s building a relationship where both parties benefit. The mentors commit to one year of service but there are Power 4 Youth mentors and mentees that have been together for years.
Join Power 4 Youth
If you want to get involved as a mentor or mentee, you can visit the Power 4 Youth website, www.power4youth.org or call 562-435-2352.
