Our Mentoring Model

iMentor recruits adult volunteers and matches them one-on-one with young people based on their shared professional and personal interests. Mentors commit to working with their mentees for a minimum of one year, spending an average of one hour per week on program activities

iMentor's Pioneering Mentoring Model

iMentor is changing the face of youth mentoring by turning two core beliefs into realities. iMentor proves that:

#1 Even the busiest, most successful professionals have time to be quality mentors.

#2 Formal mentoring programs can flourish in the most isolated, low-income, and underserved communities.

iMentor activates this under-tapped pool of mentors and connects them to NYC youth that can benefit the most from mentoring. iMentor’s pioneering, technology-enriched mentoring model makes this possible.

Our mentoring model is composed of three core components:

Making Connections  |  Cultivating Strong Relationships  |  Access to Opportunity

1. Making Connections

iMentor matches 1,000 new mentor-mentee pairs each year, drawing mentors and mentees from all over NYC city.

- iMentor recruits mentees through partnerships with schools and after-school programs in its target communities.

- Each mentee is matched one-to-one with a volunteer adult mentor.

- Matches are made by first aligning mentee career interests with mentor work experience.

- Matches last between one and four years in length.

2. Cultivating Strong Relationships

Mentors and mentees develop their relationship using a potent combination of weekly email correspondence and monthly meetings at iMentor-sponsored events.

- At no cost to participants, iMentor offers 60 in-person events between October and June of each program year.

- Mentor-mentee pairs use iMentor’s writing prompts to structure each weekly email exchange.

- Writing prompts focus mentor-mentee email discussions on important personal, college, career, and community issues.

3. Building Skills & Access to Opportunity

iMentor is committed to providing mentees with skill-building and growth opportunities that address the three critical and interrelated needs of (1) career preparation, (2) college preparation, and (3) technological literacy.

- All mentees are invited to the monthly Skills For Career Advancement Workshop Series.

- All mentees have access to the Online Youth Resource Database, a “link-epicenter” with hundreds of scholarship, internship, college, and career resources proven helpful in iMentor’s programming.

- All mentees are invited to quarterly Guest Speaking panel discussions, capitalizing on the experience of iMentor’s vast mentor pool.

Learn more about becoming a mentor.