Community Mentoring

What has changed

The present era is widely defined as a period of privatisation. In a historical process, there have been far-reaching changes in Western society in general and in Israel too. Once upon a time in Israel, many forces aspired to unify things, to create binding social ethoses with a collectivist, or at least socialist, approach. In every field of life there were attempts to crystallise a society around a single "campfire": Zionism was the unifying banner, the creation of the Israeli state, army service, Israel's wars, the Holocaust, the welfare state and so forth. The technology that allowed a single television channel, where affluence was only for a chosen few - all these and others were aspects of structuring Israeli society.

Over the years, we have witnessed a slow but constant process of disintegration of the national ethos, and several far-reaching changes. Yitzhak Rabin once called Israelis who left the country furtively "weak dropouts", and the press sneered at them as "lions who fled like rabbits". Today, it's enough to see string of lawyers' offices that help Israelis seek to "refresh" their parents' foreign nationalities, mostly European, so they can have a foreign passport that may come in handy on a rainy day...

And yet contradictory trends have also developed in recent years. Many people in the general public want to turn the clock back a little - not to the era of uniformity - but to creating a new togetherness. It finds expression in studying in secular midrashim, social initiatives, creating countless virtual communities, and a slew of other trends that express people's natural desire to live in a properly functioning, healthy society that is not built on infighting.

The community mentoring project

The project brings together a group of adult city-dwellers seeking a more active volunteering role in repairing society and creating a healthy community. Such a community is a responsible one, aspires to equal rights for the city's residents, and provides opportunities for all young people to develop and find their own capabilities.

Holon is the city that launched this fascinating process in Israel.

The Institute for Democratic Education strives to impart democratic culture, to crystallise a society where everyone can fulfil their inherent potential through interactions with others. We support the program at all stages: from the planning phase, its launch, training mentors and the professional assistants who developing and enlarge the program.

Stages of the program

Stage I

The launch group - Individual mentoring of the group's members, consolidating and creating Knowledge by Doing

Forming a launch group composed of ten adults, city residents who are willing to contribute some time (two hours a week, on average) for community mentoring.

Members of the group are active in education and social issues, for example the manager of the municipal Youth Department, the manager of the Individual Department (special education & social affairs), the manager of an elementary school, the chair of an organisation for handicapped children, a personal coach, director of the city Training Centre and so forth.

In the summer holiday, the group meets for three days of training: the content focuses on young people at risk, adolescence, personal mentoring, mentoring tools.

At the start of the school year, young people at risk are identified by the School Attendance Officers, in three schools. They are in the seventh to tenth grades, mostly do not attend school at all, or infrequently. All of them have emotional problems and the majority are from under-functioning families and lack a safe, challenging and constructive framework

The launch group meets the school attendance officers; the latter present profiles of the young people; afterwards, the children are matched with the mentors.

Each mentor meets the school attendance officer of the specific youngster to obtain information, following which the mentor contacts the student, and regular meetings begin.

In tandem with the mentoring work, the launch group convenes every three weeks. These meetings are intended to provide further learning, mutual support, problem-solving, and writing up the information and experience gained. Each member of the launch group is personally tracked by the coordinator of the programme on behalf of the Institute: it is intended as supervision of the work being done, continuing the personal training process, and fine-tuning the mentors' work where needed.

Stage II - broadening the process

Once the programme is established, more queries arrive from adults in the city who wish to join the program. At this stage, our goal is to assemble more groups of volunteers whose training will draw on the knowledge that has accumulated, after which they can start mentoring youngsters at risk.

We hope the process will result in youngsters at risk of dropping out meeting with the social frameworks, and municipal staff who hope to start positive, constructive and significant contact with them.

What is gained

• Providing a multidisciplinary response to a large number of dropout youth who fall between the cracks of the education & social affairs systems - and are in a state of risk.
  
• Assembling groups of adults for a genuine and sincere discourse on education, social issues, and friendship. Mentors undergo a special, challenging experience in their contacts with the youth.
  
• Raising the city's consciousness to the state of education and its young people.
  

Difficulties

These young people tend to be suspicious of the world of adults, and some find it hard to trust a relationship of this kind. We have to draw a balance between the programme as an informal endeavour that is not dependent on institutionalised systems, and the need to collaborate with remedial, educational, and social affairs agencies in the city. The language of mentoring is rare in the young people's world so we must ensure that the nature of the mentor-mentee relationship, and the mentor's role, are quite clear.