Park and recreation professionals play a vital role in shaping the lives of young people across the country. In North Carolina, Mount Airy Parks and Recreation is making a lasting impact through its G.R.A.N.I.T.E. (Grow. Resource. Achieve. Nurture. Inspire. Teach. Empower.) Youth Mentorship Program, which fosters positive relationships between students and adult mentors while promoting academic and social success. By creating a mentoring environment that encourages career interest and exploration and focuses on community service initiatives, the program inspires young people to become leaders and active contributors to their community.
A hallmark of the program is its integration of community service, exemplified by the annual Community Clean-Up Campaign. This initiative, conducted in partnership with local organizations, invites mentees to adopt and beautify streets, parks, and green spaces. Through activities like a recent cleanup at Riverside Park, mentees not only enhance their surroundings but also engage in meaningful discussions about giving back.
With every bag of litter collected earning funds for community scholarships, the program demonstrates how mentorship, service, and sustainability can intersect to inspire pride, purpose, and leadership in young people.
Mount Airy’s G.R.A.N.I.T.E. Youth Mentorship Program is featured in two new NRPA youth mentoring resources: Career Pathways through Youth Mentoring and Community Service through Youth Mentoring. Designed for park and recreation professionals and other youth mentoring service providers, these resources reveal guidance around promoting positive youth development by integrating elements of career exploration and community service into youth mentoring programs. By interweaving these elements with youth mentoring, we can ensure that youth-adult relationships, especially in recreation, provide support to youth as they start to discover their identity, purpose, and contributions to society.
Career Pathways Through Youth Mentoring
Park and recreation professionals continue to play an important role in guiding young people as they explore their possibilities in the professional world. Specifically, a meaningful mentoring relationship that incorporates opportunities for career exploration can equip young people with the skills, experiences, connections, and confidence needed to successfully transition from academics to the professional world.
This resource is designed to help park and recreation professionals and other youth mentoring service providers promote career interest and exploration within their youth mentoring programs. This resource summarizes the importance of career exploration among youth, outlines key considerations for planning and implementing career-focused mentoring activities, explores career exploration strategies that can be integrated into youth mentoring programs, and identifies common challenges, solutions, and real-world examples relating to the intersection of youth mentoring and career exploration.
Community Service Through Youth Mentoring
Having the opportunity to give back to your community can be an eye-opening experience, but it often is an experience many young people never get to have. However, as leading providers of youth development services, including mentoring programs, park and recreation professionals are uniquely suited to introduce young people to the value of community service, while teaching them to be active collaborators in their communities.
For this reason, NRPA created this resource to equip park and recreation professionals and other youth mentoring service providers with the tools necessary to integrate elements of community service into their youth mentoring programs. This resource summarizes the importance of engaging youth in community service, outlines key strategies to introduce community service to youth in mentoring programs, and identifies common examples to support the integration of community service into youth mentoring programs.
We hope these new resources are of great value to you and your agencies. As you start to explore these concepts, feel free to share your success stories and strategies with NRPA!
Cina Makres (she/her) is a program specialist at NRPA.