Experiences at Community For Youth

We have some sort of activity pretty much one evening a week for about 3 hours -- evenly divided between mentor/student one on one time, mentor-only trainings, workshops, and fun activities with the whole group.

My students (I have two because there weren't enough female mentors) are great, so one on one time is a lot of fun. We've gone rock climbing, went to the Frye Art Museum (they were impressed with the Swallow Harder exhibition), and ate at Jones BBQ.

The fun activities can be a little overwhelming with 30 (or more if they're combined with other schools) teenagers and whatever sugar and caffeine they've managed to buy.

The mentor trainings are a good place to connect with the other mentors, compare notes about our students. Colby and Krista, who run the program, are great at dealing with mentors freaking out and not knowing what to do.

The workshops are mostly for the students to learn about various topics that pretty much all point to setting and acheiving goals and having good relationships. It can be challenging for Colby and Krista to keep the attention of all the students, but they do a great job of keeping order and at the same time directing their energy towards participating instead of creating distractions. The students are definitely a lot more attentive than they are at school....

"Participate 100%" is a real CFY cliche, but it's really true that what you get out of the program is what you put in to it. Some activities might sound too crazy or too woo-woo, or too embarrassing, but in my experience they're all worth trying.