Jared’s Fund Youth Fellowship Mentorship Guidelines
On behalf of Jared’s Fund, thank you for agreeing to serve as a mentor for one of the 2022 Jared’s Fund Youth Fellowship project teams. As a program devoted to advancing youth leadership and youth empowerment related to mental health awareness and efforts to combat the stigma around mental illness, your support and guidance to the Fellow(s) you will be working with is crucial to moving forward our cause. We appreciate, in advance, the time that you will be spending with the Fellow(s) and look forward to meeting and engaging with you.
We are providing the following guidelines for those who are serving as mentors. These should not be interpreted as what you are “limited” to do, but guidance regarding the role we hope you will play. Please feel free to reach any of us with any questions or comments. (Our contact information is at the bottom of this form.)
General Information about the Program:
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JFYF will begin on July 5, 2023 and end on August 9, 2023. There are usually four JFYF projects during the fellowship period—some of which are group-projects and some of which are individual projects. While each project team will operate independently in conjunction with their mentors, Jared’s Fund (JF) will also be working hard to develop relationships between projects so the group as a whole can get to know each other and gain the benefits of being in a cohort. To that end, JF will be doing an array of cohort-wide programs and events. These will include, at a minimum, (1) a cohort meeting at least once a week, (2) a speaker series with experts and mental health and community leaders at least once a week, and (3) other social and professional events.
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As a mentor, your overall role is to provide supervision, guidance, and support to your Fellow(s). The weekly meeting, which we ask you to arrange, can be done in a variety of ways and is likely to take a variety of forms, all of which you can adjust as it makes the most sense. Given that the purpose of this Fellowship is both to create a cadre of “Mental Health Warriors” and to provide a strong leadership development experience, we welcome your energy and creativity in partnering with us and your Fellow(s) in whatever ways make sense. We also note that the Fellows are taking on complicated and, at times, emotionally wrenching topics, and ask you to be particularly sensitive to this dynamic.
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As the Mentor, you will go over the project with your Fellow and come up with a “work plan”. The work plan will include your Fellow’s overall goal and what you and the Fellow perceive weekly work outline/goals for the project will be. It should then be forwarded to Jackie Wolf prior to June 28th at 5:00 PM. We have found in the past that the wonderful ambitions of Fellows sometimes exceed the time they have, and therefore see this as an opportunity to “rightsize” the project without diminishing enthusiasm or initiative. In particular, we work to ensure there is clarity about the deliverable or other end goal that is to be accomplished before the Fellowship ends.
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Your Fellow(s) will be asked to keep a weekly journal with time spent on their project, what they accomplished, and one new thing they learned that week. Although we are not asking the fellows to “punch a time clock” our hope is that this will be the Fellows main focus during the six-week time frame and expect steady advancement of the project. We also ask that you meet with them once a week to ensure things are going according to plan. The weekly journal will also assist them with writing their summary of their experience with the fellowship to be turned in at the end of the six weeks.
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As noted above, we hope in your weekly meetings and other interactions with your Fellow(s) that you can provide the following:
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Guidance and support. Address challenges that may arise and “help” problem solve for a solution. Sometimes it’s good to let them “discover the answer on their own (with a little assistance)!
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Feedback. Allow your Fellow to experience the formation and execution of the project but provide any helpful advice that might assist with the success of the project. They will also learn from your life experience or your experience in the mental health field.
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Enthusiasm for the project. You will be the person your Fellow turns to with great news and also not so great news. Your enthusiasm for the success of the project will help pave this path.
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We will distribute to you the speaker series schedule and other events that we are planning. We do expect all Fellow(s) to attend and appreciate your feedback to us if there are any concerns, we should be aware of. We would enthusiastically welcome you to join any of these.
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Please feel free to communicate with us at any time about the program and your Fellow(s)’ experiences. We will follow up with you at the end of the program to get your feedback on how we can strengthen this effort (in addition to getting feedback from the Fellows). As this is our third year with the Fellowship, we are continually evolving and looking for ways to make our program better and to help strengthen the efforts in the greater Montclair community to build mental health awareness and combat mental health stigma.
Thank you so much,
Jackie Wolf, JF Managing Director
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(310)614-7967
Jackie Baillargeon, JF Advisory Board Co-Chair
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(917)699-4290
Ken Zimmerman, JF Advisory Board Co-Chair
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(917)434-0638