Mentoring Resources for Black History Month
2/11/2020
As a mentor, you've probably discovered that your experience with Big Brothers Big Sisters is about more than connecting with a child. It's also about opening yourself to new people, places and experiences. And, it's not bragging to say that most of our mentors consider themselves life-long learners. That's why we've compiled a list of resources for Black History Month that you can share with your Little, or explore on your own.
Learn about famous (and not famous) African Americans
BlackPast.org is an online reference guide to African American history started by University of Washington history professor Quintard Taylor, which includes a section dedicated to providing resources for mentors. According to the university, BlackPast.org was started by Taylor in 2007 with fewer than 100 entries. It now has 13,000 pages of material, with about 4,000 online encyclopedia entries in all. Check out the mentoring resources here.
In this 2 1/2 minute video interview, the late poet Maya Angelou talks about the impact of mentoring in her life.
Prefer podcasts? Check out this great list of episodes from NPR's Code Switch podcast about the hidden heroes and buried history of black America.
Hone your cultural competency
Cultural competence is the ability of a person to effectively interact, work, and develop meaningful relationships with people of various cultural backgrounds. Gaining cultural competence is a lifelong process of increasing self-awareness, developing social skills and behaviors around diversity, and gaining the ability to advocate for others.
Mentor-focused cultural competency training is available on BBBS's Learning Exchange platform. Contact your Match Support Specialist to take the webinar.
Check out this free Culturally Responsive Mentoring workbook from the Mass Mentoring Partnership (MMP). Headquartered in Boston, the MMP is a Massachusetts organization dedicated to strategically expanding quality mentoring to meet the needs of youth. The organization serves more than 200 organizations in Massachusetts.
Do you know of any other great resources we should be sharing? Email Casey Caster at ccaster@bbbsnh.org to share your suggestions and we'll add it to our post.