Youth Peer to Peer Mentoring: Recruitment and Retention
Recruiting youth can be very daunting. Breaking it up into smaller bite sized achievable tasks can make it seem less scary. This thing about working with young people with disabilities is that youth cannot be a service, youth are a population. Just like any population you might serve, young people have their own culture. They may respond differently than other groups you work with. As such, it is important to find out what youth want, and to do your best to try and include them and their specific needs and culture. One of the first things you might want to do is needs assess youth to figure out what it is that they want out of a program and how to best entice them to get involved. Even if you already have an idea of what you are going to do, you still need young people to come and use your services.
So... where do you find youth? How do you get them to come?
APRIL Youth Peer to Peer Manual: Recruitment and Retention
These are brainstormed lists from youth involved with APRIL from across the country on where to look for young people to get involved, how do you make your programs and CIL attractive and accessible for young people, and information on how build upon programs you already have that could be attractive to young people as well as how to partner with organizations and programs for youth that are already working.
Materials
Sometimes the hardest part of a new program is figuring out where to get started. Below are some examples from our partners on fliers, letters, or advertisements they used in order to get started. Along with our material of resources and activities to assist you in being successful in this area of programming.
Flyers:
Letters:
Resources:
Community Tool Box, Assessing Community Need and Resources
Community Tool Box, Developing Strategic and Action Plans
Activities:
Animal Prints Ask Them Beach Ball
Bumper Stickers Guidelines Height Game
Label Game Name_Game Ouch-Oops
Pass_the_Artichoke Pictionary Say_What
String_Game String_Theory_of_Connectedness
Telephone Traffic_Jam Two_Truths_and_a_Lie
For more information contact Sierra Royster,
Youth Programs Coordinator at
Many THANKS to those that have helped make this material a reality!!
ADAPT brothers and sisters, Billy Altom, Josie Badger, Mike Beers, Mike Blatchford, Rebecca Cokely, Mike Collins, Rene Cummins, Justin Dart Jr., Yoshiko Dart, Ellisa Ellis, Barry Fox-Quamme, Letiah Fraser, Gloria Garton, Chiaki Gonda, Linda Gonzales, Carrie Greenwood, Kathy Hatch, June Hermanson, Judy Heumann, Travis Hoffman, Alex Jackson, Mary Leary, Melissa Madill, Mike Mayer, Jude Monson, Michael Murray, John Nousaine, Tom Olin, Mary Olson, Sierra Royster, Julia Sain, Tom Seekins, Tim Sheehan, Amber Smock, Julia Thomas, Sarah Triano, Craig Ravesloot, Eddie Rea, Curtis Richards, Ed Roberts, Betsy Valnes, Amber Wallenstein, Glen White, YLF Alumni from Montana, YLF Alumni from North Carolina, YLF Alumni of Oklahoma, ABLE CIL, Erin Weierbach, Center for Independent Living of Central PA, Alie Kriosfske-Manielle, Susan Cerverlla, Dustin Gibson, Moriah Grace, Grant Heffelfinger, and Rachel Kaplan.