About Braid's mentoring program
- Our mentoring program is for youth ages 9-16 in the San Francisco Bay Area and serves youth who have spent time in foster care or kinship care. If you are interested in referring a young person who falls outside this age range or have questions about other criteria for our program, please feel free to call or email us before sending in the referral form.
- Braid’s mentoring program provides teams of mentors for each youth, and our goal is that these teams will stay with a young person for a minimum of one year but hopefully much longer. Our matching process can take awhile (several weeks or more, depending on our pool of mentors), because we are trying to lay the foundation for long-term relationships and support.
How the matching process works
- After receiving your referral, we will schedule a phone call with you to learn more about the young person you have referred and what type of mentors might work best with them.
- If the young person seems like a good fit for the Braid program, we will schedule a meeting with the youth and their caregiver. At that meeting we will explain more about the mentoring program, answer any questions they have, and learn more about their weekly schedules and interests.
- We assemble a team of mentors that will be a good match for the youth based on their interests, weekly schedule, and geographical proximity. We want to be sure each team has a positive balance of personalities and strengths.
- When a potential team is assembled, we will send information about the mentors to the youth and caregiver and schedule a first meeting with the youth and mentors.
- Youth have the opportunity to opt out of Braid’s program at any time, and we want them to participate voluntarily. If they do choose to leave the mentoring program, we will ask that they help close these relationships with a final outing.
- There is no cut-off age or time limit on the Braid program. We commit to long-term relationship with a young person for as long as they want to actively participate. If a mentor has to step away from the team for any reason, we facilitate a healthy goodbye and welcome a new mentor to the team.
- It usually takes us longer to match boys with a team. Like most mentoring programs, we are always looking for more male mentors. Most teams for boys include female mentors.
- Braid teams can meet on weekends or weekdays, depending on the availability of the volunteers.
- If the youth is currently involved in any other mentoring programs, such as Big Brother Big Sister, they would not be a match for the Braid program. Our goal is to serve youth who are not already benefitting from a mentoring relationship.
