PYD's National Center and Mass Mentoring Partnership work together for more inclusive mentoring programs

Partners with Youth for Disabilities has teamed up with Mass Mentoring Partnership, as part of a collaborative project, funded by a grant from Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation, to develop training materials for youth mentoring staff, mentors, and mentees on the inclusion of youth with disabilities in mentoring programs. As the umbrella organization for mentoring programs in Massachusetts, Mass Mentoring Partnership has the ability to train hundreds of mentoring programs in the state to be inclusive.

The collaboration kicked off with a workshop led at the first National Conference on Mentoring for Youth with Disabilities, held in Boston September 13-15. The workshop was led by MMPs' David Shapiro, President and Chief Executive Officer, Sue Anne Endelman, Vice President of Strategic and Training Services, Corey Manning, Director of the Mentoring Institute, and PYDs' Genelle Campbell Thomas, PYD's Director of National Initiatives and Strategic Partnerships, and Sarah Callahan, PYD's Mentoring Program Director.

The workshop focused on "The Inclusion Mentoring Project: Including Youth with Disabilities in Mentoring Programs". It covered the benefits, challenges, and future steps involved in creating inclusive training materials for programs statewide in an effort to demystify the concepts and practices of inclusion and accommodation within mentoring programs. Both MMP and PYD look forward to continuing this partnership into National Mentoring month, where inclusion in the mentoring field will be highlighted as a special focus. The new training materials will be piloted and evaluated this winter, with a publication date scheduled for the spring.

For more information on this project, contact Genelle Campbell Thomas at 617-556-4075 x 28 or gcthomas@pyd.org.