PALMDALE – If you have always wanted to mentor an Antelope Valley youth, but didn’t know where to go, then the mentor recruitment event next Friday was created with you in mind.
The YouthBuild Mentoring Partnership recruitment will be held from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday, May 18, at the Antelope Valley YouthBuild Campus, located at 37230 37th Street in East Palmdale.
The event is free and open to community members who are looking to become a mentor for youth, ages 16-24. Food and drinks will be provided.
Potential mentors will have a chance to meet with representatives from Antelope Valley YouthBuild and other local youth-service organizations.
By becoming a mentor, you will be able to offer support and guidance, through a one-on-one relationship, and assist a young person in achieving his or her developmental goals. You don’t need prior experience — just be a caring adult who wants to make a difference in the life of a young person.
To learn more about how to become a YouthBuild mentor, contact Olivia Altamirano at 661-266-8900 or oaltamirano@avyouthbuild.com.
Antelope Valley YouthBuild was started in 2006, with the goal of harnessing the power of young people to bring about community change. YouthBuild takes young people who have dropped out of traditional educational programs and provides them with a chance to “flip the script” on their life.
Students spend half of their time in the classroom working toward a diploma. They spend the other half working in the community building low-income housing, learning valuable skills and earning critical construction trade certifications.
The mentoring component at YouthBuild is relatively new, initially funded by a grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention at the U.S. Department of Justice. The idea behind the addition of mentoring was to give the students access to a supportive voice from the community, one that can connect the work students do at YouthBuild to their lives outside program hours.
To help youth make this transition, YouthBuild mentors commit to a 15-month match with a student. Most of the mentoring happens while the student is in YouthBuild, but the program provides a wealth of support and training so that the matches can continue for as long as participants want to keep meeting.
To learn more about Antelope Valley YouthBuild, visit avyouthbuild.com.
(Information via press release from the City of Palmdale and Antelope Valley YouthBuild.)
See previous related story:
AV YouthBuild gets $800K grant
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