One night when I had time to escape the harsh reality of the busy world in which I reside. I found myself thinking of ways to make the world smaller, so that we can connect more responsible adults with at-risk youth. How can this be achieved? I mean with work and attending school full time as a graduate student at the University Of South Alabama. I haven't had the time to create a machine that could shrink the world,without causing permanent damage LOL! So I found that using as a form of synchronous communication, could actually make our world just a tad bit smaller. There are other synchronous communication tools, but I think skype is a great tool to start with, for the purpose of this post. Skype is free to the public, recent updates provide the user with the opportunity to share your screen with other's and perform conference calls.
You may ask yourself what does have to do with youth mentoring (the theme of this blog)? One main issue that youth mentoring organization's face is recruitment. Many potential mentors report that they don't have the time to contribute to mentoring programs. The best practices of mentoring guide, reports that a mentoring program requires at least 1 hour a week and 4 hours a month of communication between the mentee and mentor pair. Depending on who you are, this could sound like a big time commitment, when you factor in the drive to and from the meeting site. However, what if you perform your mentoring duties from your home or office?! This could be made possible with use of skype. It's free, easy to set up and user friendly.
Face to face (traditional) mentoring made possible from the comfort of your own, how cool is it that?!?!?!
So, here is that question, would you as a mentor/mentee participate in a youth mentoring program if you could do so from the comfort of your own home?
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