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Our labor economy is changing, and as more young people join the workforce, mentoring relationships can be a vital tool in retaining and amplifying new talent. In service of this, MENTOR partnered with JPMorgan Chase and four nonprofits to design and implement a career readiness program to help young people channel their ambitions, expand their professional networks, and articulate and investigate solutions for challenges they identified within their communities.
For MENTOR and JPMorgan Chase, this continued partnership advanced their shared mission to help young people and mentors tap into a growth mindset where they learn, work, and play. “Our team is committed to preparing youth and adults for an evolving workforce,” said Marlee Henderson, Global Philanthropy Senior Associate at JPMorgan Chase. “We were already doing this work in partnership with MENTOR for young men of color. We wanted to focus on providing the same type of meaningful development and mentorship and engage more of our colleagues and reach even more young people.”
As the COVID-19 pandemic continued, MENTOR Affiliates and community partners in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, and Indianapolis exercised flexibility while implementing the program’s curriculum. “Adapting is not a problem,” said Yalonda Brown, one of the Indianapolis’ facilitators and Senior Outreach Manager of Central Indiana at Indiana Youth Institute. “It’s what you do in youth development.” Adjustments include hosting the sessions on Zoom, capturing feedback through discussion and surveys, and reimagining icebreakers to respond to the participants’ energy and technology access.
Through project-based assignments, program participants combined their lived experiences, strengths, and professional ambitions. Marlee Henderson explained, “It’s important for youth to dissect their lived experiences and know they have the solutions within themselves. Hopefully, that will inspire them to be community-minded and take charge in their communities and careers.” To bolster their confidence, youth participants received guidance from 150 JPMorgan Chase volunteers and existing mentoring relationships.
The program’s rich curriculum inspired participants to challenge program facilitators to think about how their lessons would impact their communities. In Indianapolis, the youth participants led projects addressing food insecurity, cultural isolation, and underutilized public spaces. Leveraging diverse professional interests, these young people developed solutions that prioritized physical safety, created multilingual information systems, and scaled access to health services, child care, housing, and nutritious foods. Applying a philanthropic lens to this program was the perfect union of the civically engaged-mindset that many youths have and JPMorgan Chase’s interest in expanding its community engagement efforts.
Charline Alexandre-Joseph reflected on the impact of the program’s successes, “This opportunity provided young people a chance to expand their networks, gain valuable insight into the work the JPMorgan Chase volunteers do, and get closer to securing access to future career opportunities. Moreover, MENTOR Affiliates got an opportunity to expand their reach and meet new organizations for future collaboration and an opportunity to amplify the mentoring movement.”
MENTOR and JPMorgan Chase are excited for the next phase of this program, which includes expanding into new cities, and what it could mean for the mentoring field and the young people looking for ways to engage in the education and labor economy but are unclear where to start.
Learn more about effective practices for mentoring
CLICK HERE to DOWNLOAD our free report, checklist and more.
MENTOR’s workplace mentoring resource is a how-to guide of best practices for workplace mentoring programs. Produced with generous support from JPMorgan Chase & Co., the Workplace Supplement to the Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring is the latest in MENTOR’s series of relevant and timely supplements to the cornerstone publication, Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring.
