The Mentoring Group

In its pilot year, The Mentoring Group partnered successfully with Safe and Drug Free Schools of Greenville County, and in the upcoming academic year, it will collaborate with IBM Corporation's Mentor Place. Mentor Place offers an exciting and innovative way to bring adult professionals and students together for one-on-one and group online mentoring. Through this strategic partnership, we will give those individuals who have time restraints an avenue to participate in the academic and personal achievements of our youth.

Another collaboration of The Mentoring Group is with Kinesis Development LLC, which provides a research-based curriculum to help students in our program develop personal leadership skills. The 10-week Rising Star program engages our youth in weekly sessions focusing on topics such as leadership, success, influence, choices, attitude, goal-setting, obstacles, priorities, understanding self, leading others, communication skills, making decisions, problem solving and more. For the mentors, Kinesis Development will conduct an initial training highlighting their roles as mentors and ways to engage their mentees in a positive mentoring friendship, and provide follow-up training sessions throughout the year.

The Mentoring Group is expanding its involvement in the community by partnering with the Greenville Urban League of the Upstate to provide mentoring and leadership to out of school youth, incorporating it as a part of their work experience and obtainment of their GED. In addition, we are collaborating with "I Can!" Learning Center and the Empowerment Zone so that our participants will receive individual or group tutoring in academics, and will have an opportunity to express themselves in sports, dance and self-defense.

The Mentoring Group will initiate partnerships with higher learning institutes, local and governmental agencies, churches and community organizations that have a vested interest in the positive outcomes of our youth.

The Mentoring Group provides technical assistance to faith and community-based organizations planning to create and maintain their own mentoring programs.