9/25/2013

Holiday Party at Winter Lodge this December

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Did you know that it takes two very dedicated Program Coordinators to secure our Holiday Party at Winter Lodge?


If you are an Alumi Senior Friend, you’ve probably come to one of our Holiday Parties at Winter Lodge in Palo Alto. For the last few years, due primarily to budget set backs, Friends for Youth has offered an alternative to our annual ice skating experience. We’ve had a good run with Nothing But Hoops. But, to really get into the holiday spirit, we wanted a cozy fireplace to sit near, a lovely ice rink to play on. No doubt the dodge ball of the last two years was great fun, but it didn’t put everyone into the season’s spirit.
Dodgeball insanity at Nothin But Hoops!
Winter lodge is a pricey event, for sure. But, thanks to the generosity of our Alumni, and the hard work of Mentoring Services Director, Rebecca Duran, we have raised the funds needed for this year's Holiday Party on ice! Hurray! Done deal? NO.
Winter lodge has this funny system where you have to wait in line on the first day of registration to get a spot. No big deal, you say? People camp out starting from 8pm the night before. We’re serious!

Everyone in front of us had been there since 11pm the night before. 

Maribel gracefully took the 3am to 7am shift, while Kristen took us home from 7am to 11:30am. The results? 13th place in line and a KILLER TIME SLOT this year! 11:30am to 2:30pm!!!

It's going to be an amazing event this year for sure. This holiday event is usually the BIGGEST activity of the year, drawing both new and Alumni Friendships. Make sure to check out the Discovery Times to find out dates and times for this awesome party.


We’d better see you come December! :)


9/16/2013

Fun and Rewarding Times, at the San Francisco Zoo

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This past Saturday three Friendships participated in “Renew The Zoo” at the San Francisco Zoo. All three Friendships got their hands dirty (not really- everyone was wearing gloves!) as they helped clean up an area of the zoo. The cleanup included mulching, raking and wheelbarrowing materials from one location to another. Once the hard work was completed, Friendships were able to enjoy the rest of the day by exploring the zoo and learning new things. Friendships got to “volunteer, work out and got in their entertainment all in one day/location.”


9/05/2013

Five Resources for Recruiting Volunteers to Your Mentoring Program

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As the new school year has officially started, many youth mentoring organizations will receive an increase in the number of youth recommended to their programs. Because of this, we have compiled a list of some resources that can help recruit adult volunteers to your mentoring organization and to help you make more successful mentoring matches.



Putting the “Men” Back in Mentoring

Finding male volunteers is a problem that is faced by most mentoring programs. This article written by Michael Garringer provides information on why recruiting male mentors can be difficult for mentoring programs, and also gives some great ideas on how to bring more male mentors to your program.

For more great tips about getting men involved in mentoring, take a look at Mentor Michigan’s Men in Mentoring Toolkit. This can help you design a complete recruitment message, and gives lists of talking points that can help you to recruit male volunteers:


The Chronicle of Evidence-Based Mentoring

The Chronicle is a great online resource that provides new findings and research related to the youth mentoring field. It also aims to promote dialogue about youth mentoring, and does this by including forums on different topics in the mentoring field for people to add their own opinions. Many of these forums and the research featured in The Chronicle are excellent tools to help you come up with new volunteer recruitment ideas for your youth mentoring organization.

The latest Forum question in The Chronicle asks “What is your most effective mentor recruitment message?” If you have any recruitment messages that have worked particularly well for your program, join the discussion and add your thoughts. 



The ABCs of School-Based Mentoring

This resource provided by Education Northwest is especially relevant for schools or districts that are thinking about implementing on-site mentoring services. It contains an excellent section on recruiting volunteers, including a number of recruiting strategies and some of the challenges that can arise when recruiting on-site volunteers.


Monthly Webinars

Every month, Friends for Youth’s Mentoring Institute teams up with Mentoring Partnership of Minnesota’s Training Institute, Education Northwest/National Mentoring Center, Oregon Mentors, Mentoring Partnership of Southwestern Pennsylvania, and MENTOR to provide the Collaborative MentoringWebinar Series. These webinars focus on a broad range of topics, many of which could help your program in recruiting more mentors. You can also view past webinars, which are excellent resources for mentoring programs. The live webinars take place on the third Thursday of every month. The Collaborative recently held a webinar in July on Men in Mentoring; you can view the recording of the webinar and check out additional resources.


Twitter Tips


Finally, for more information on volunteer recruitment, take a look at Friends For Youth’s Mentoring Institute on Twitter, @MentorInstitute, as we will be sending out more recruitment resources throughout the month of September.

Thanks to the Mentoring Institute's summer intern, Megan Bridge, for this month's post!

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