One in three young people growing up today do not have a mentor, meaning they are less likely to enroll in college, volunteer regularly, or take on leadership roles compared to youth with a mentor, according to information from MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership. However, an annual University of Georgia summit aims to shrink that gap by investing in mentoring efforts statewide.

MENTOR Georgia, coordinated by the UGA J.W. Fanning Institute for Leadership Development, hosted its third annual MENTOR Georgia Summit June 28-29 at the UGA Center for Continuing Education & Hotel in Athens.

For the first time, the event included a one-day youth summit for young people and their mentors, made possible by a grant from the Starbucks Foundation and MENTOR National. The MENTOR Georgia Youth Summit featured workshops by youth on topics specifically designed for youth ages 14 to 24.

“I learned ways to communicate better with my peers through activities in the sessions,” said Denise Faulks, a rising 10thgrader from Macon. “Overall, I had fun attending the summit and learned a lot of things that I will use in the future.”

Sessions at the youth summit, attended by nearly 80 youth, mentors and youth development professionals, covered topics that included navigating conflict through communication, maximizing their relationship with their mentor, managing stress, utilizing tools for college access, and identifying personal strengths and purpose.

“Helping youth develop the skills to engage and make their voices heard contributes to building stronger communities,” said Leslie Hale, MENTOR Georgia executive director. “I am grateful for the generosity of the Starbucks Foundation in supporting our youth summit and all of our sponsors, whose support was crucial to making the summit a reality this year.”

Other sponsors of this year’s MENTOR Georgia Summit included Georgia Power, the YMCA of Metro Atlanta, Brad and Kay Bryant, and The Mentors Project of Bibb County.

While the summit’s second day focused on youth, the first day of the summit focused on practitioners in the youth mentoring field: professionals, volunteers, board members and partners of youth mentoring organizations.

Approximately 75 attendees from across Georgia heard presentations on topics such as program evaluation, mentoring others as a leader, organizational capacity-building and understanding one’s role as a mentor while also learning more about tools that mentoring programs can use.

“The summit gave me so many ideas, tools and tips to take back and not only share with my co-workers, but also to use directly with students to help work with them and build stronger mentoring relationships,” said Tiffany Vaught, a school safety advisor for the Paulding County School System. “For example, a session on using music as a tool to enhance engagement with teens is something that I could see benefiting students that I work with. The summit was an amazing experience.”

The summit represents one way in which MENTOR Georgia supports youth development by providing professional learning, capacity-building, and training in evidence-based best practices to youth mentoring programs around the state. MENTOR Georgia launched at the UGA Fanning Institute in 2021 as the statewide affiliate of MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership.

“By supporting mentoring agencies and investing time and resources in the leaders who run those programs across the state, we are opening doors for Georgia’s next generation to succeed and helping to invest in our future leaders,” Hale said.

For more information on MENTOR Georgia, click here.