How to Build a Community Compact
Mentor/Volunteer Program
What Is a Community Compact
Mentor/Volunteer Program?
• A plan to increase partnership and resources for providing
mentors, tutors and volunteers to students attending the lowest
achieving high schools and associated feeder school within a
community.
• A strategy to help students succeed in school, work, and life
• Builds confidence, resources, and support to achieve potential
What Does It Take To Start a Community Compact
Mentor/Volunteer Program?
Collaboration is the key to providing this continuum of services
Marketing efforts to recruit Mentors/Volunteers is paramount
Training for potential mentors/volunteers
Matching of mentors and mentees
Ongoing support to maintain, sustain, and improve mentor
relationship
• Resources
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Community Collaboration
• Mentors are to be from within the community
• Volunteers are to be from within the community
• Engage parents consequently increasing the level of
encouragement and guidance students receive at home to
improve the motivation to attend school regularly
• Job shadowing opportunities
• Internships
Marketing Efforts
• Develop a clear objective
-Gain support for mentoring concept
-Recruit mentors and volunteers
• Plan an effective communication strategy
-Establish the need for mentoring to enhance student support
services
-Describe the program components and activities
-List benefits and impact of mentor/volunteer program for the
community
Community Compact Communication Strategy
• Audience #1- Business Community
- To generate mentors/volunteers, internships, job shadowing, and
funding
• Audience #2- Community and Faith-Based Organizations
- To recruit mentors/volunteers and generate in-kind support
• Audience #3- Schools and Local Education Agencies
- To recruit mentors and program participants
Sample of Marketing Tools
Recruitment
• Partners should be chosen because they can increase and enhance the
delivery of student support services
• Can share in the care available to each student and family in service
• Interact with students and families on a regular basis
• Hold and provide opportunities that can better serve the students
participating in the community compact
• Local businesses provide internships, job shadowing, mentor
opportunities and volunteers
Mentor Agreement Template
Training
• The Community Compact should provide substantial training to mentors and
volunteers providing services to students through the community compact
• Training should align directly to the mentoring, tutoring, and volunteering
activities provided through the community compact workshops, job training,
character education)
• The training should include the program rules
• Mentor goals and expectations
• Mentor obligation
• Ethical issues
• Available assistance to support mentor
Training Tools
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Training agenda
Sign-in sheets
Mentor/volunteer training evaluation surveys
Mentor training content (PowerPoint, handouts)
Alignment to mentor/tutor/volunteering activities
Essential Forms
A Sample of the Community Compact Mentor/Volunteer Training Tools
Attendance Sheet Template
Evaluation Form Template
Mentoring Program
Training
Sample PowerPoint Presentation
Why Should You Be a
Mentor?
• Provides a student with a personal connection and buy-in
• Helps student to feel like someone “has their back”
• Increases student morale
• Improves student motivation
• Source of accountability, encouragement, support, and
advocacy
• Helps student to perceive school, teachers, work in a more
positive light
When Should You Be a
Mentor?
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When students are unsuccessful academically or behaviorally
When other interventions seem to fail
When a student is having significant issues getting along with others
When students exhibit very little motivation and effort or just do not seem to
care about work and/or behavior
When students seem to have little guidance and/or support in the home
When a student seems suspicious of the school and staff
For those kids that always seem to get a bad break and are perpetually in trouble
and/or failing
When a student is frequently suspended and/or is in danger of expulsion
When a student does not seem to respond to anything else
How Do I Mentor?
Make a list
• Preparing for your first meeting
• Make a list of things that you want to know about the student
• Make a list of the things that you think that they want to know about you as
a Mentor
• Write down as much as you can and begin a communication process
through email if possible.
How Do I Mentor?
Take the initiative
• Make the first call or email for the meeting
• Meeting time is Essential, don' t shift meeting time around to accommodate my busy
schedule
• Only an emergency should alter your date
• Have a back up person that has already met the Mentee (This should not happen
more than once.)
Be clear about purpose and boundaries
• Gift-giving, other than educational, acting as an advocate for career advancement,
making empty promises, or loaning money, out-of-bounds in mentoring relationships
• Set Ground Rules for how you will communicate (tone) with each other
• Discuss whether ethical or moral issues are allowed or to what extent during
conversations
Create an agenda
• Prepare an Agenda and ask Mentee if they would like to add anything
• Some of typical items are (1) getting to know each other, (2) goals and expectations,
(3) concerns that might interfere with our meeting together, (4) initial impressions, (5)
questions you have about Mentee, and (6) why you think you can be a worthy mentor.
How Do I Mentor?
Listen deeply and ask powerful questions
• Two essential skills for successful mentoring are
• (1) in-depth listening, that is, suspending judgment, listening for understanding
and providing and accepting a supportive atmosphere; and
• (2) asking powerful questions, that is, questions that are challenging in a
friendly way and questions that help the other person talk about what is
important to that person. Ask only "open-ended" that usually start with
"how" or "what."
Plan for the next meeting
• Review your mutually developed agenda to determine our progress.
• Solicit any ideas about what you both might want to discuss at your next meeting
• Ask for an impression of how this meeting went and what might you both be able to
do (or stop doing) next time to make the next meeting as good or better.
Experiment with process
• Use coaching, role plays, simulations, role rehearsals, experiential learning
activities, brainstorming, mind-mapping and other techniques that may assist the
Mentee
• Just be transparent
• Go for a walk together, sharing lunch or a snack
How Do I Mentor?
Focus on wisdom
• You are a resource, catalyst, facilitator, idea generator, networker, and
problem-solver, but you are not a person with all of the answers.
• You have experiences and you have learned from those experiences
• Your Mentor Role is not one in which you "tell" another person what to do or
how to do it
• Freely share what you have done (or have learned), not as a prescription,
but more as an example of something from which you gained some wisdom
• Contribute ideas or suggestions, be a collaborator, “Don’t let knowing get in
the way of being."
Maintain and respect privacy, honesty, and integrity
• Offer confidentiality in the legal sense only, but do the best you can to ensure
that "what is said in this room stays in this room."
Talk to Parents Often
• Establishes and builds trust and rapport with parents at home
• Increases parent and home cooperation
• Provides increased support for students at home
• Helps dispel misinformation and mistruth students may give to parents
• Avoids students positioning parents against teachers
• Helps to get everyone on the same page
• Helps to get parents involved and increases buy-in
• Helps provide parents with accountability
• Can diffuse angry parents’ concerns
Matching
• The Community Compact should consider the goals and
outcomes as well as characteristics of the mentor and mentee
• Compact should arrange initial meeting between mentor and
mentee
• Mentor interpersonal skills should always be considered
Ongoing Support
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Training opportunities and enhancements
Problem-solving support
Access to resources, staff and community members
Supervision
Recognition
Thank you for participating.
If you have questions about this presentation, contact:
Janna M. Willett
POPS PLUS Community Compact
Janna.willett@popsinc.org
(407) 843-1202