August 2007

In This Issue
What's New
New Funding Opportunity
Latest Research
Events
What's NEW on the site?
Nrgize

NRGize 2007- October 30th - November 1st 2007!
The next NRGize workshop for 2007 will be held in Perth WA from October 30th - 1st November 2007 in partnership with the YMCA Perth. The NRGize Workshop is a comprehensive training program that has been developed and trialled by practitioners over a number of years both within Australia and internationally. The program focuses on the development of mentoring programs for youth.

Included in your registration fee is a 450 page resource folder full of notes and activities.

Places are strictly limited and registrations will open in two weeks time. 

Click here for more information about NRGize

Volunteering Australia fact sheets and guides
Volunteering Australia has released a number of fantastic resources to assist volunteer organisations in engaging volunteers from multicultural and Indigenous backgrounds. These guides include a "Practical Guide to Involving Volunteers from Diverse Cultural and Language Backgrounds in Your Organisation" and a guide on how to include Indigenous Australians as Volunteers. Click here to find out more information and other publications by Volunteering Australia.

Victorian Government launches it latest mentoring guide
The Victorian Government launched is latest guide during Victorian Youth Mentoring Week (July 29th - August 4th) hosted by the Victorian Youth Mentoring Alliance. The "Guide to Supporting Effective Programs for Mentoring Young People (2007)" has been produced as a practical resource for those involved in funding and supporting mentoring programs for young people.

This Guide is a companion document to 'A Guide to Effective Mentoring for Young People (2006)' which was produced to assist mentoring practitioners to develop and implement mentoring programs based on good practice. The Guide also covers some common knowledge and practical guidance on the development of quality mentoring programs but has a particular focus on program development and management undertaken by funding bodies and other organisations supporting formal mentoring programs. Click here to learn how to obtain a copy of the guides.
 
New Funding Opportunity

Funding from the Foundation for Young Australians
The Foundation for Young Australians is offering a new funding opportunity called Your Eyes Only. Your Eyes Only is a national competition for young people aged 12 -15 years to celebrate the strengths of their community by submitting a creative entry celebrating their community through their eyes.

Successful applicants will nominate a community group working with young people in their community, for example a school or a youth mentoring group, to receive a donation. This donation would then be used by the community group to further its work by either purchasing much needed equipment or adding funds to an existing program.

Entries close 17 September 2007. Click here for application forms and more information
 
Latest Research

Latest school based research is released
The latest research document to be completed by Public/Private Ventures in the USA is now publicly available. The document 'Making a Difference in Schools: The Big Brothers Big Sisters School-Based Mentoring Impact Study' by Carla Herrera, Jean Baldwin Grossman, Tina J. Kauh, Amy F. Feldman and Jennifer McMaken with Linda Z. Jucovy was released earlier this month.
 
The report describes the programs and their participants and answers several key questions, including: Does school-based mentoring work? What kinds of mentoring experiences help to ensure benefits? How much do these programs cost? Click here for more information and the download the document.

It's Crunch Time - Latest Report from the Dusseldorp Skills Forum
This discussion paper from the Australian Industry Group and DSF updates the picture and aims to stimulate debate and ideas on how young Australians can be better skilled and engaged. Drawing on what we know works, the paper urges more integrated policy and thinking in education and training. Click here to find out more and to download the document. 

Understanding Australian Mentoring Programs
Huge thanks to all the people who completed the 'Understanding The Australian Mentoring Community Survey' which was available on our website during June and July. The online survey is now closed, however, if you completed the paper version, and have not yet sent the survey in, please send it to us and we will add your comments to the data.
 
If you have not received the survey and would like to complete it, please contact us at  info@youthmentoring.org.au and we will be happy to send one to you. The more data we have for our survey, the more we will be able to determine the needs of our mentors and mentoring organisations.

The results of the survey will be published soon, so keep an eye on our website - www.youthmentoring.org.au.
 
Events

Attention Western Sydney Organisations
The Youth Peer Education Mentor Network will be holding forums on a regular basis. This network is for all Mentoring and Peer Education project workers. It's an opportunity to develop contacts with others working on similar projects, share information and identify and help to address issues that are affecting our sector. For details of the next meeting or for more information contact, Jennifer Bulley on 9840 9939 or Kellie Darley on 9671 4333 extension 116.

Youth Mentoring Forum Series
Gold Coast Mentoring Forum
The Youth Mentoring Network, in partnership with SCISCO, will be holding the Gold Coast Mentoring Forum on Tuesday, 28 August 2007 at the Oxenford and Coomera Community Centre. The topic for this forum will be Understanding Peer Mentoring. There are a limited number of spaces left. Click here for more information and to download the invitation.

Ballarat Forum
The Ballarat Forum is scheduled for 12 September 2007. Please take note of the new date.

Bunbury Forum
The Bunbury, WA forum is scheduled for 20 September 2007 and will be a whole day event hosted by Jobs South West.  More details will be released shortly.

Other Conferences
NSW Youth Work Conference 2007 - Celebrating and Strengthening NSW Youth Work, hosted by Youth Action and Policy Association NSW
19, 20 & 21 September 2007

Click here for more information about these conferences or any other mentoring events. 

Click here to view a complete list of mentoring and youth events happening around the country.

Promoting an event or meeting?
Holding a mentoring event or community meeting? Want to promote it to others beyond your normal networks? If you have an event or meeting that would interest youth mentoring practitioners, funding groups or mentors themselves, then you can add these events to the E-newsletter and YMN website. Simply send an email to info@youthmentoring.org.au containing all the event details by the last Friday of the month and we will be happy to help with your promotion.
 
 Sincerely,
 
Kathleen Vella
Youth Mentoring Network Australia

Visit the website at http://youthmentoring.org.au
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