The Youth Empowerment Revolution: Part Three

From student to teacher — a young person’s experience as a mentor to other youth

This April holidays, I had the privilege of being invited back to YCA to mentor at the 9–13 year olds program hosted by the City of Sydney. Working with younger children is something I have had experience with in the past and always thoroughly enjoyed — and this time was no different.

You’re going to have to humour me referring to the participants in the program as ‘kids’ — I’m only 3 years older than some of them, but even this highlights to me the immense amount of developmental change a young person undergoes during their transition from childhood to adolescence. Physical changes aside, the worldview of a child versus the worldview of a teenager is vastly altered by a barrage of social expectations that only really hit in full force at around 13. For this reason, I believe that it so important that kids are able to experience a program such as the one YCA hosts, in order to equip them with the confidence, self assurance, motivation and passion they need to set them in the right direction as they begin navigate the tumultuous world of growing up.

To me, the best part about mentoring youth is those special moments that you share when they are talking and you are listening. Being invited into the head of a young person is a true privilege — getting to see this wild, imaginative and purely awesome idea transfer from their mind to yours is just indescribably amazing. It’s impossible not to get inspired by what is going on in there — and young people are guaranteed to think and approach problems in ways you’d never expect.

I left the program abuzz with excitement about new ideas and just revelling in the level of sophistication achieved by some of these 10 and 11 year olds — albeit a little drained. The program was certainly very challenging from a mentor’s perspective, and much more so than I had expected.

Going through the same motions as I had one year previously, but from a completely different angle, was eye opening in so many ways. The amount of intensive mental effort, patience and dedicated guidance you have to invest in each and every young person participating in the program leaves you thoroughly exhausted. Some groups in particular struggled with every task and needed constant reminders to keep going — but all the effort didn’t go to waste. Seeing each group team up on stage to pitch the ideas they had put so much time and thought into made my heart swell with pride. I have little mental screenshots of their expressions of nervous accomplishment.

I wonder if that’s what I looked like a year ago, too.