naturally in the past, I devised a structure where other people could
do it also, regardless of their areas of giftedness.
When beginning a mentoring program, it is very important to have
a strategy and structure in place. When devising the strategy for my city,
I asked the following questions: How do I get adults and children talk-
ing? Which level(s) of mentoring will I address? How will mentors and
mentees spend their time together? What will they talk about?
The TALKS approach to mentoring answers these questions
through three strategic components:
- Strategy 1: Minimum mentoring. Mentors keep a one-hour-per-
week time commitment (a businesslike relationship with the children). - Strategy 2: One adult mentoring three children.
- Strategy 3: The use of an issue-oriented curriculum based on
applying wisdom to daily life.
Strategy 1: Minimum Mentoring
The TALKS mentoring movement focuses on “minimum mentor-
ing,” a preventive strategy for helping large numbers of youth while
providing a simple structure for busy working adults to maximize the
time that they spend with the mentees. (Chapter 9 will describe other
levels of TALKS mentoring, in the context of men mentoring boys—
my own area of greatest expertise.) All mentoring takes place at the
school during the school day, and generally employers are willing to
give their employees one hour per week of leave time from the job to
do the mentoring.
Our mentors spend just thirty minutes a week with each mentee.
No evenings, weekends, extended hours, trips, or the like. This level
of mentoring is not for “hard-core” kids. But if we can get such a pro-
gram flourishing, we’ll have fewer hard-core kids.
We begin our mentoring groups at the elementary school level
and have the mentor follow the children through each grade. Over a
period of years, the thirty minutes a week of sharing wisdom can have
a tremendous influence on the young people. At the same time the
mentors do not get burned out and are able to give more time in the
long run.
164 BUILDINGSTRONGFAMILIES