Mentoring Central helps Movement of Youth
grow while maintaining quality
The Challenge
Movement of Youth’s (MOY) Founder and President, Atrayus Goode, was committed to providing high quality training to the mentors in his program. When MOY was a small organization, training mentors was relatively easy. Recently, however, MOY has grown substantially and now supports college student-led chapters at 10 universities throughout the nation. Goode needed to guarantee that all of his mentors were receiving equally effective and comprehensive training, even though they were hundreds of miles apart from each other. This training also needed to complement the in-person trainings that were held at the local chapters.
The Context
MOY was founded by Atrayus Goode in 2006 while he was a student at The University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Seeing the challenges and struggles faced by underrepresented populations, Goode designed a mentoring program to prepare youth from diverse backgrounds to tackle the world. In MOY, mentor teams are in contact with participating high school students at least eight hours a month. Mentees also participate in college tours, MOY’s Leadership Academy, and MOY’s Summer Enrichment Academy. All of the students in MOY complete community service hours, and enroll in both AP and Honors courses. Currently, MOY has hundreds of participants from across the United States.
The Solution
MOY saw that by using an online training program, they could ensure that each of their mentors, regardless of location, would receive the same, high quality training that was based on the latest research findings. Mentors would be able to take classes at their own pace, before participating in their in-person, chapter-specific training. MOY found that Mentoring Central’s online courses were a perfect fit for their needs. By making sure that each mentor completes the courses before going to chapter-specific training, MOY can ensure that all of their mentors have completed state-of-the-art training upon entering the program; thus, maximizing the impact of the MOY program and positive outcomes for the students.
“It’s important to us to follow the Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring, so these online courses helped us standardize evidence-based training across all of our sites.”
“Mentors appreciate the self-paced nature. They can take the course at their leisure.”
The Results
MOY requires the Building the Foundation course to be completed by each mentor before they are matched. Mentors regularly comment on how they value the research-based, highly useful content in the course. MOY plans to continue to use Building the Foundation, and have expressed interest in adding other Mentoring Central courses into their training protocol. MOY’s success is attracting the attention of funders, who are interested in helping them expand their work and impact. Impressively, 100% of MOY’s mentees have graduated from high school. iRT is working with MOY to help win additional grants, by incorporating Mentoring Central’s research-based courses and other services into their grant proposals.
For more information about MOY:
406 Blackwell Street, Ste. B030
Durham, NC 27701
(800) 956-3820
movementofyouth.org
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