Our Mentoring Program
We provide supportive relationships in a mentoring program designed to help young people recognize who they were created to be and guide them through a process to build character that enables them to overcome hurdles and utilize their strengths to achieve great purpose in their lives.
Our Mentors
Our mentors are caring, knowledgeable, trusted advisors who guide and support young people to grow personally by helping them understand who they were created to be, see the bigger picture, and overcome negative influences in their lives to reach their full potential.
Why is Mentoring Necessary?
Many young people today live with a false identity. They believe lies about who they are, the result of “normal” childhood trauma, or sometimes more significant trauma.
We were all born with various physical attributes of mobility, dexterity, and strength, accompanied by the mental attributes of conscience, reasoning, and imagination. We were made with the underlying desire to produce, to feel worthwhile, and to accomplish our purpose(s) in life. These inborn attributes are the tools that enable us to be creative and productive.
However, as we grow up, our character and identity development are influenced by interactions with our family and others in the community. And when people have experienced some dysfunction in their lives growing up, they often act through a filter of their dysfunction and can negatively impact the development of the youth they influence.
Finding Your True Identity
Our mentoring program’s initial step is to provide each participant with their temperament profile, followed by a general discussion that helps participants understand who they were created to be. The profile identifies a person’s unique inborn temperament, along with their strengths and weaknesses tendencies.
But knowing who we were created to be doesn’t automatically lead us to change the false identity we adopted growing up. Most problems in our lives are the result of some attitude or behavior; they don’t just happen. Therefore, to overcome these problems, we must replace old attitudes and behaviors with new ones.
Hence, the next step in our program is to educate participants on the concept of emotional intelligence (EI). High EI enables the emotional regulation that allows a person to respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively to stressful situations. The basic components of EI include self-awareness, self-control, empathy, motivation, and the ability to form and maintain relationships.
However, just as understanding one’s temperament does not automatically produce a change in attitudes and behaviors, neither does simply understanding EI bring about change. Therefore, following the EI guidance, we lead people through an in-depth examination of the universal laws, or principles of character, that drive life. These laws show us the consequences, the impact on our lives and the lives of others, that result from actions we take.
Analyzing these principles strengthens our character as we come to better understand the nuances of each and learn how to activate the principles in our daily lives. This undertaking helps us recognize our gifts and gives us guidance on how to activate and utilize these gifts, not only to become successful ourselves, but also to help others become successful.
As participants embrace these principles, they will find those passions, desires, and their life’s purpose, all of which have been hidden in the cloud of a false identity. This will lead to new and positive emotions and a new or restored set of values. And the payoff here is that participants will discover a new, true identity – that person who is loved, respected, valued, and sought after, one who can accomplish the things his or her heart desires.