Family to Family Mentoring
"Weaving Strength into the Fabric of Community"

Overview
Family to Family Mentoring helps grow healthy families by providing mentors to guide and encourage those who are grappling with the myriad of challenges that face families trying to overcome poverty and at-risk conditions. Hundreds of people have found the support needed to transform their lives — moving from welfare to self-sufficiency — as a result of caring volunteer mentors who have been trained by Family to Family Mentoring. Family to Family’s broad range of mentoring services, along with its comprehensive curriculum, effectively strike at the heart of issues that keep people from reaching their potential.

Family to Family Mentoring, a division of Garden Pathways, Inc., has been selected by the University of Southern California and the California Council of Churches as a “promising practice — a program that breaks new ground and exemplifies the power of collaboration in leveraging the capacity of faith-based organizations to serve the state's poor.” Since 1998, the Kern County Department of Human Services has maintained a partnership with Family to Family Mentoring to provide mentoring services to its families and youth. The Kern County Probation Department also has selected Family to Family Mentoring as its provider of mentoring services. Family to Family Mentoring serves CalWORKs and Child Protective Services participants, family and youth impacted by gang violence, emancipating and emancipated foster youth, pregnant and parenting youth, and other at-risk youth. Family to Family Mentoring serves a broad range of at-risk participants in an established program that offers both individual and group mentoring for youth and adults, including therapeutic mentoring services. Family to Family Mentoring’s emphasis on the process of engagement deals with the real barriers to success and fosters lasting and long-term changes.

Family to Family Mentoring was developed to lift families who are struggling with poverty through mentoring. Amidst the plethora of public programs, case managers, and service agencies, one critical element is missing — a relationship with a caring and healthy mentor. Initiated during the implementation of California's welfare reform, Family to Family Mentoring has developed training, curriculum, and structures to support the efforts of volunteers who can communicate basic life-skills such as parenting, career growth, budgeting, and family organization. Family to Family uses a research-based "structured, team approach to mentoring" that maximizes the impact of the mentor. Each family participates as a partner with their mentor, so that they make a personal investment in their own future, which is multiplied by the efforts of the mentor. This approach reduces dependency and builds confidence.

Family to Family Mentoring seeks to help each participant in three areas:

• Grow in hope
• Experience community
• Develop skills

Family to Family Mentoring Success Stories "Mentor helps unite family torn by drugs" "Mentors teach self-sufficiency" "MENTORING: Helping others find new lives"

Community Perspective
Family to Family Mentoring operates under the principle that healthy community requires the participation of all its members. The ultimate goal for those who receive mentoring is to become a mentor to others. Each community member and organization can be an asset that brings valuable perspective, skill, and strengths to the community. To repair the significant problems facing our cities, every healthy network and community asset must be brought to bear on the human problems of abuse, poverty, welfare dependence, and failed relationships. In spite of the the many problems that face us, some elements of the community have been marginalized in the effort to mobilize effective social programs. The faith community is one of those segments that has been bypassed in the development of social solutions, but cannot be ignored if success is to be achieved. Intentional outreach and mobilization of the substantial resources and membership of community congregations through mentoring is an appropriate and important element of a total community approach to development.

The unique cultural approach of each community element is considered in the development of mentor training and curriculum. Appropriate language and emphasis mobilize unique mentors to use their own life experience in a way that will strengthen a family or individual struggling with poverty. For those coming from a business perspective a business enculturation approach is used in both training and curriculum. Mentors who hail from the faith community are trained using language that resonates with their world view and provided with non-religious curriculum that focuses their efforts to build hope, develop skills, and bring a healthy experience of community to each one who is mentored.

Using the principles of Federal Law found in the Charitable Choice Provision of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, each mentor and participant chooses to mentor or participate either from a community or faith-based perspective. This approach respects the values of the individuals while linking them to individuals with a broader network and a more positive world view. Family to Family Mentoring has trained more than 100 churches, multiple police departments, and hundreds of mentors who all bring their unique strengths to the process of mentoring. Material and training provided by Family to Family finds appropriate expression in any community entity that desires to build healthy families, strong parents, and effective social interaction.

Mentoring
The Ingredients for Successful Mentoring...
In selecting Family to Family Mentoring as a "promising practice," The University of Southern California's Center for Religion and Civic Culture noted, "Bakersfield's Family to Family Mentoring provides a good model for leveraging California's faith community's capacity to recruit and to train mentors for CalWORKs participants. The training materials are the best we have seen. The training and oversight structures are exemplary."

Many organizations attempt mentoring programs, but often have a success rate that falls below 25%. That means that for every four mentors that they recruit, only one is able to develop a successful relationship that has the desired impact. When three out of four volunteers have this negative experience, many do not try mentoring a second time — and the workforce is lost. Because mentoring is perhaps the critical effort that will make a permanent difference in the lives of people, it deserves the very best program design, curriculum, and training that is available. Family to Family Mentoring provides the very best in these areas.

What Do Successful Mentors Need?

Expert training that prepares them to meet the participant in a 50/50 relationship — both mentor and participant ready to contribute. Structure and curriculum that allows the mentor to provide quality content. Ongoing support to solve problems quickly before they end the mentoring relationship. A match with an appropriate participant who has been oriented to what will be expected of him/her. Goals and direction that give the participant the full advantage of reaching for his/her dreams with the experience and support of a mentor.

What is Offered by Family to Family?

Structured Mentoring Our program provides a structured curriculum that can be tailored to the individual's need and used to support the mentor. Non-Profit Access Our non-profit structure has a solid grant funding record, and can supplement the activities of other funding sources. Referrals and Matching With current relationships with dozens of agencies, specific referrals are sought and individuals expertly matched for best mentoring possible. Expert Training and Support With professional mentoring staff and trainers, specially tailored training is provided to prepare mentors for productive relationships.

Mentoring Training
Mentoring training will prepare volunteers to be effective mentors. Items covered include avoiding dependency, how to build a partnership with needy families that will encourage their achievement of goals, the use of community resources and curriculum, and how to understand the culture and world view of families struggling with poverty. In addition, the volunteer will examine his/her own personality to understand effective mentoring methods.

Faith Based Mentoring Training
An orientation to effective mentoring is provided so that it resonates with the unique worldview and language of the faith community. The appropriate expression of personal values in the context of Charitable Choice approach to community service allows the mentor to serve those participants who wish to receive mentoring from a member of the faith community. The mentor is taught how to include the participant in their healthy social network and to build an effective partnership.


Life Skills
Family to Family seeks to provide mentors with the tools to lead participants in the development of critical life skills. We build hope, but without skills our hope falls flat.

Critical life skills Shifting away from a crisis lifestyle Goal setting and reaching Dealing with anger Dealing with depression Successful relationships Parenting Home organization Budgeting and finances Career growth — "getting and growing your career" Understanding your personality and those of your family Building personal confidence

It's not just what you teach, but how you teach it that is important. These skills may be taught most easily in a classroom, but that is not how they are best caught. Life skills are learned through practice and modelling, and so mentors can share these skills as the needs and the interest become evident.

Opportunities
Volunteer as a Mentor — Your gift of 24 hours, just one day, can change a family forever

You Can Change the Future of Our Community How can I help our community in a meaningful way when my time is limited? We feel the call to serve our community and help those in need. However, our personal responsibilities prevent us from devoting as much time as we might like. Given limited time, can I still make an impact in the lives of others? With Family to Family Mentoring, your gift of twenty-four hours, just one day, can change a family forever. Hope is a stranger to many in our community who only know poverty, abandonment, and life-dominating challenges. Your investment of twenty-four hours as a mentor can bring the guidance, encouragement, and hope needed to change the course of their lives. Family to Family Mentoring offers clearly defined opportunities for mentoring that make our community stronger. I’m not an expert. How can I help? You do not need to be an expert to be a mentor. Mentors are ordinary people who care about others. Mentors guide and encourage. They share wisdom and encouragement from their personal life experience. Mentoring utilizes many of the daily skills that you take for granted — if you can shop, get and keep a job, parent a child, or build a budget, then you could be a great mentor. Family to Family Mentoring will support you with experts. As a mentor, you will receive training and have access to a wide-array of field-tested mentoring curriculum guides. You also will have the ongoing support of mentoring consultants, qualified professionals who can provide their expertise when the needs of participants exceed the scope of your personal knowledge. To volunteer in Kern County: contact us or call (661) 633-9133 or register at Volunteer Match .

Become a Corporate Sponsor — A strategic community investment
The significant impact that mentors bring to a community needs the support of business to succeed. Family to Family Mentoring trains mentors to help those participating to see work from the employer's perspective, and the changes that mentors bring to the workforce within the community. Make mentoring a strategic community investment.

"Women with a Heart for Bakersfield" High Tea Garden Pathways will honor outstanding “Women with a Heart for Bakersfield ” at the sixth annual High Tea on Wednesday, September 10, 2008 at Seven Oaks Country Club. We invite the community to nominate candidates for consideration. Last year we were pleased to have honored five women with a caring heart who have made a positive and lasting impact on our community through noteworthy service , leadership , and mentorship. Irma Carson Peggy Darling Pauline Larwood Jeanette Richardson Parks Rebecca Rivera