As a resource to promote best practices throughout Nebraska, MENTOR Nebraska provides several fundamental training and assessment tools at no cost to mentoring programs. These training opportunities help mentoring programs gain the support and resources they need to provide high quality mentoring experiences.
MENTOR Nebraska Trainings
Critical Mentoring Book Club
Session 1: Thursday, May 12, 12-1 p.m. CT
Session 2: Thursday, May 26, 12-1 p.m. CT
Session 3 featuring Dr. Torie Weiston-Serdan: June TBD
Facilitator: Marisa Hattab
Audience: Mentoring and youth-serving professionals
Format: Webinar
Join mentoring and youth-serving professionals across Nebraska to explore how critical mentoring can empower and uplift young people. The critical mentoring concept places youth at the center of the process, challenging norms of adult and institutional authority and notions of saviorism to create collaborative partnerships with youth and communities that recognize there are multiple sources of expertise and knowledge. Participants will read Dr. Torie Weiston-Serdan’s “Critical Mentoring” book and create action steps towards infusing critical mentoring approaches within organizations and mentoring practices.
Participation is limited to 30 people so please submit an interest form by April 22. All participants will receive a copy of the book.
Intro to E-Mentoring
Wednesday, May 25 | 12-1 p.m. CT
Facilitator: Braxton Crowder
Audience: Mentoring professionals
Format: Webinar
E-mentoring elevates the unique intersection of mentoring and technology by providing mentees and mentors with a diverse field of programs that center availability and accessibility of platforms, eliminate geographic barriers for matches, encourage improvement of social and relationship skills, and offer specialized academic or career related support. This workshop will offer mentoring program staff best practices for e-mentoring programs.
Trauma & Recovery 101
Thursday, June 23 | 1-3 p.m. CT
Audience: Mentoring & youth-serving professionals, mentors, youth counselors, and educators
Format: Webinar
Trauma-informed mentoring is an approach to help mentors and youth serving programs recognize and acknowledge the role trauma plays in young people’s lives. This training covers how trauma affects young people, what trauma informed care is, how to create safe environments for young people, and practices to avoid re-traumatizing.
MENTOR National & Affiliate Trainings
Collaborative Mentoring Webinar Series
3rd Thursday of Every Month | Noon - 1:15 p.m. CT
Presented by MENTOR National
The Collaborative Mentoring Webinar Series is funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention through the National Mentoring Resource Center and facilitated in partnership with MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership. These webinars would not be possible without the planning team, which includes the following Affiliates: MENTOR Colorado, MENTOR Illinois, MENTOR Independence Region, MENTOR Indiana, MENTOR North Carolina, MENTOR Vermont, and MENTOR Washington. Through ongoing planning and evaluation of the latest developments in the field, this team delivers a webinar each month focused on strengthening mentoring practice, sharing new resources, and helping the field put research into practice.
Custom Training & Consulting
No-Cost Consulting
Mentoring is good, but quality mentoring is better! MENTOR Nebraska exists to strengthen the quality of mentoring throughout Nebraska by providing capacity building support (called technical assistance) to mentoring and youth-serving programs. Our team of mentoring experts can provide up to 50 hours of free consulting based on your program’s individual needs.
Examples include:
- Guidance on mentor recruitment
- Creating a program logic model
- Developing mentor training materials
- Strengthening volunteer screening practices
- Implementing diversity, equity & inclusion practices
Contracted Custom Training
MENTOR Nebraska develops custom trainings for youth-serving programs, schools, nonprofits, and government/community organizations based on their specific needs.
Recent projects include:
- South Dakota Dept. of Labor & Regulation
- Metro Young Latino Professionals Association
- Elevate Omaha
- Nebraska 4-H
- Latino Center of the Midlands
- Heartland Workforce Solutions
- My Brother’s Keeper
- Omaha Performing Arts
Learn more about pricing and schedule a free consultation by emailing info@mentornebraska.org.
Training Catalog
Recruiting Diverse Mentors & Volunteers
A common challenge mentoring programs face is recruiting mentors and volunteers who reflect the young people they serve. This training challenges participants to rethink mentor recruitment and focus on building relationships with diverse communities.
Mini Cultural Competency Series
Need a starting point for understanding youth today? This miniseries covers how to use cultural competence to connect with youth culture. The series covers:
- Cultural Intelligence – Let’s Test Your IQ
- Cultural Differences- What Makes Us Different?
- Teen Culture - Not Your Teenage Years
Creating Equitable Outcomes by Increasing Youth Voice
Harness the power of mentoring by giving a voice to the next generation. This training is designed to provide strategies for elevating youth voice, by providing avenues to showcase youth resilience and creativity. Young people will share their ideas on how to allow them to lead the way.
Combatting White Saviorism
Mentoring relationships and programs have the power to reproduce or reduce racial and economic inequality. They also have a moral obligation to do no harm to the youth and families being served. This training explores what white saviorism looks like as well as the harmful impact it has on youth. Participants will develop the ability to recognize white saviorism in mentoring relationships and programs and explore concrete strategies to combat its harmful effects.
Askable Adults
It can be quite awkward to have these conversations, whether it be protecting young children from unwanted touch or preparing teens for puberty or dating. Participants will learn how to be equipped with information, skills, and the comfort needed to discuss age appropriate sexuality topics with young people.
Reverse Mentoring
People often think that the longer you are with an organization, the more you know and the less you need to learn. However, regardless of experience or age, every employee can benefit from a mentoring relationship. Reverse mentoring provides a safe environment for senior employees to learn new skills and trends while giving younger employees a sense of purpose and belonging. This training helps younger professionals learn mentoring skills
and strategies to “mentor up” to senior colleagues. Participants will also gain a new perspective of teamwork and recognize their role in elevating success.
Connect Focus Grow
Meaningful workplace relationships are a key building-block of a strong company culture. Connect Focus Grow is an activity and discussion-based training that helps young professionals and supervisors develop a mentoring mindset which can significantly impact the culture of your business and working teams. This training will help participants:
- Develop skills to deepen relationships
- Understand how perceptions and biases impact relationships
- Expand web of quality relationship supports and social capital
- Learn how to communicate in the workplace and provide feedback
- Set goals to advance professionally
- Create a higher level of morale in the workplace that impacts employee retention
Developing Leaders
Mentoring is an effective approach for investing in employees and also drawing in new diverse talent to organizations. This training explores how organizations can take steps towards a more inclusive workplace culture, stronger working teams, and improved onboarding and development of emerging leaders. Participants will walk away with a newfound understanding about their influence and how they can help others grow and evolve as well.
Building Social & Emotional Skills Through Mentoring
Mentoring is a powerful vehicle for social emotional learning (SEL) development and growth both in and out of school. This interactive training provides a foundation of what SEL is (and is not), the importance of SEL development in young people, and how this healthy development increases their chances of future academic, career, and life success. Participants will walk away with activities and strategies for staff and mentors to use in
their mentoring sessions.
Trauma Informed: Refugee Populations
Social awareness and relationship skills are important for refugees to thrive in a new country. Social and emotional learning (SEL) can provide a bridge to newcomers, creating an inviting and responsive environment through mentoring. By combatting a deficit mindset, mentors and youth-serving professionals will be able to build stronger connections while honoring refugee culture though SEL. Participants will walk away with activities and strategies for staff and mentors to use in their mentoring sessions.
Supporting & Mentoring Refugee Youth: Strategies for Building Cultural Competency
Refugee youth often face many challenges as they adapt to a new culture and strive to succeed in a new environment. This training provides an overview of the refugee resettlement process, including where refugees come from geographically and culturally, why they come to the United States, and common misconceptions. Participants will learn strategies on how youth-serving programs and mentors can create a safe and culturally supportive space for refugee youth as they navigate the challenges of a new culture. Refugee youth and their guardians will also share their perspectives and experiences.
Group Mentoring
While youth mentoring is most often conceptualized as a one-to-one relationship between a single caring adult and a young person, the reality is that group mentoring models reach as many young people as the more traditional individualized programs. Group mentoring has the ability to provide 360-degree approaches to supporting young people by amplifying collective impact.
Intro to the Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring
This training is an introduction to the best practices for mentoring program design, management, operations, and evaluation. The content provides school, community, and faith-based organizations with tools to learn the basics of designing a quality mentoring program based on the Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring.
Elements of Effective Practice Miniseries
Are you considering starting a mentoring program or want to strengthen your current program? This training provides an overview of research-informed and practitioner-approved standards for creating and sustaining quality youth mentoring programs and consequently, impactful mentoring relationships. Participants will be able to select which EEP standards they desire to do a deeper dive into.
- Week 1 - Recruitment and Screening
- Week 2 - Training and Matching
- Week 3 - Monitoring and Support & Closing
Trauma & Recovery 101
Trauma-informed mentoring is an approach to help mentors and youth serving programs recognize and acknowledge the role trauma plays in young people’s lives. This training covers how trauma affects young people, what trauma-informed care is, how to create safe environments for young people, and practices to avoid re-traumatizing.
Critical Mentoring Approaches
Critical mentoring provides mentors with a new and essential transformational practice that challenges deficit based notions of protégés, questions their forced adaptation to dominant ideology, counters the marginalization and minoritization of young people of color, and endows them with voice, power, and choice to achieve in society while validating their culture and values. Critical mentoring places youth at the center of the process, challenging norms of adult and institutional authority and notions of saviorism to create collaborative partnerships with youth and communities that recognize there are multiple sources of expertise and knowledge.