Professional Mentor-Friend

A Professional Mentor (“Friend”) works intensively with eight (8) children as a positive adult role model to develop a caring, trusting, and sustained relationship with each child. For each child, a Friend will set positive expectations; nurture and promote the child’s strengths, talents, and abilities; help ensure the child’s physical and emotional well being; teach life and academic skills; provide enrichment activities;

and model responsible behavior. A Friend will fully document activities and participate in an ongoing evaluation process. Friends will work primarily one‑on‑one with their assigned children in schools, program facilities, family homes, and community locations, and during transportation. Because Friends work independently with children, they must remain attentive to each child’s safety, location, needs, and surroundings throughout mentoring activities. A Friend must also know, understand, honor, and support the organization’s mission, vision, values, principles, and policies, and be able to clearly articulate the organization’s function.

• Work independently with each child to develop and sustain a long‑term, caring, protective, and supportive relationship;
• Spend one‑on‑one time with children while maintaining continuous, developmentally appropriate supervision and attention to each child’s safety, location, needs, and surroundings in community settings;
• Plan and carry out mentoring activities in schools, program facilities, family homes, community locations, and other environments that may be noisy, crowded, unfamiliar, or unpredictable;
• Respond promptly and appropriately to unexpected situations, behavioral concerns, medical needs, emergencies, and other circumstances affecting a child’s safety or well‑being;
• Develop, maintain, and follow a Roadmap or Transition Plan for each child;
• Partner with parents and caregivers to provide concrete social emotional supports for the family;
• Establish individualized goals based on each child’s strengths, talents, abilities, and needs;
• Teach life skills and healthy habits that support positive development, self‑esteem and resilience;
• Develop a talent/skill/area of interest with each child to help develop positive self‑esteem and experience growing confidence;
• Deepen cultural connections by incorporating culturally responsive practices, activities and programming;
• Provide enrichment opportunities that support cultural identity development and belonging;
• Build collaborative relationships with families, teachers, and others involved in each child’s life;
• Reinforce basic academic skills and support youth in achieving educational success;
• Maintain spending within budgetary guidelines;
• Complete required documentation, including time summaries, activity journals, short‑term plans, expense reports, and evaluations materials accurately and on time;
• Attend and actively participate in team meetings, trainings, and staff functions;
• Provide information and support to leadership regarding program activities and outcomes.

• Demonstrated ability to relate to children and develop trusting, supportive relationships;
• Ability to give assigned children sustained attention and supervision while managing environmental distractions and competing demands;
• Ability to respond appropriately to unexpected situations and exercise independent judgement under varying circumstances and levels of stress;
• Ability to actively monitor children and maintain a secure, hazard‑free environment at all times, including but not limited to, recognizing and responding appropriately to safety concerns and emergencies involving children;
• Ability to safely transport children in personal vehicle as…