BOSTON. (September 22, 2020) – Partners for Youth with Disabilities will partner with MENTOR to advance inclusive mentoring environments for youth across the country thanks to a $100,000 grant provided by the Milbank Foundation. This partnership will focus on providing training on disability inclusion to mentoring programs across the country and increasing national advocacy efforts of mentoring for youth with disabilities.
PYD will provide access to its learning platform (Learn.PYD.org) to MENTOR’s entire network of over 3,000 mentoring programs. This platform will provide youth mentoring programs with access to 30+ hours of online training on disability inclusion through online courses, webinars, and guidebooks.
“We are so excited about this opportunity to collaborate deeply with MENTOR and to bring greater disability inclusion knowledge and practices to mentoring programs across the country. This partnership has the potential to have a huge impact on the lives of young people with disabilities across the U.S., providing them with greater access to caring adult mentors,” said PYD’s National Inclusion Manager, Steve.
PYD will also take part in hosting a briefing on Capitol Hill with the Congressional Bipartisan Disabilities Caucus and the Congressional Youth Mentoring Caucus, as well as increasing inclusive practices at MENTOR’s events including the National Mentoring Summit.
“We are thrilled to deepen our work with Partners for Youth with Disabilities,” said Dr. Elizabeth Santiago, MENTOR’s Chief Program Officer. “This partnership demonstrates the power of relationships and will ultimately expand access and inclusion across mentoring nationwide.”
By joining forces, we plan to increase support for mentoring programs nationwide by making them more accessible for all youth with disabilities.
About Partners for Youth with Disabilities:
PYD’s goal is to create a world where young people with disabilities can live with dignity and pride in who they are, and lead self-determined lives filled with purpose. To make this happen, PYD builds the skills and abilities of young people with disabilities and increases the inclusivity of workplaces, organizations, and communities. PYD is a non-profit that offers a variety of programs such as one-to-one, group, and online mentoring; career readiness training, and disability inclusion training.
About MENTOR:
MENTOR is the unifying champion for quality youth mentoring in the United States. Our mission is to expand the quality and quantity of mentoring relationships nationwide. Potential is equally distributed; opportunity is not. A major driver of healthy development and opportunity is who you know and who’s in your corner. 30 years ago, MENTOR was created to expand that opportunity for young people by building a youth mentoring field and movement. The result: a more than 10-fold increase in young people in structured mentoring relationships. Today, we are the expert voice representing a movement that is diverse and broad and seeps into every aspect of daily life – meeting young people everywhere they are from schools to workplaces and beyond.