With January being Mentoring Month, Mentor Canada equipped hundreds of social agencies and nonprofits across Canada with cutting-edge mentoring tools, templates, services and resources all month long, to help grow their mentoring capacity, profile, and volunteer numbers year-round.

“This is just one example of how Mentor Canada advances our mission to accelerate and scale mentorship across Canada,” clarifies Tracy Luca-Huger, Executive Director at Mentor Canada. “But there’s a lot more we offer—and with good reason.”

Mentored youth are more confident, likely to succeed in education, prepared for employment, and more socially connected than those who aren’t mentored. The profound benefits of mentoring are especially important for equity-deserving youth and those facing social barriers and challenges related to mental health, employment and inclusion. What’s concerning is that Canada’s youth have nowhere near enough access to the mentors they need.

Canada is dealing with a significant mentoring gap

Research from Mentor Canada sheds light on the issue:

• A staggering 44% of surveyed youth did not recall having a single mentor between age 6 and 18.
• More than half of young adults recalled a time growing up when they wanted a mentor but did not have access to one.
• 72% of youth with a diagnosed disability, 69% of youth from sexual minorities, and 61% of Indigenous youth recall a time when they wanted a mentor but did not have one.
• Over 60% of organizations report that the demand for mentoring programs outpaces their offering and availability.
• Youth aged 18 to 30 encounter a “cliff’s edge of service”: with only about a quarter of mentoring programs in Canada continuing to serve young people after they turn 18, young adults are expected to make their way into the working world with little support.

Tackling the gap requires both strategic focus and grassroots action.

Strategic focus

Four strategic pillars uphold every Mentor Canada initiative:

1. Influence & Inspire: Inspire a culture of prioritizing and investing in mentoring relationships for young people in Canada.
2. Research & Data: Advance research on effective, equitable and quality mentoring relationships, structures, and policies.
3. Build Capacity & Impact: Leverage expertise to support partners and the mentoring field in accelerating and deepening mentoring impact.
4. Tools & Solutions: Advance and share evidence-based tools and solutions to remove systemic and individual barriers to quality mentoring.

Grassroots action

Through Mentor Canada, service providers and organizations can access multiple opportunities to maximize the effectiveness of their valuable work by integrating mentoring. These include:

• Quality Mentoring System (QMS): Principle-based, evidence-informed resources and tools to support developing and delivering high quality mentoring to drive real-world results.
• Capacity-Building and Technical Assistance: Access Mentor Canada subject matter experts for 1:1 consultations and technical assistance, including a portfolio of innovative tools, mentoring resources and research to advance quality mentoring.
• Leading-edge Training and Professional Development: Mentor Canada collaborates with researchers, funders, and change-makers to develop learning opportunities that programs can easily access, many of which are free.
• Canada’s only national Community of Practice on mentoring: Here, practitioners engage in focused discussions, gain critical insights from subject matter experts, and explore evidence-based mentoring resources.
• Research Hub: Unlimited access to groundbreaking mentoring research, including current reports, articles, academic papers, issue briefs, webinars, and proprietary studies to support learning, organizational priorities, and funding.
• Mentor Connector: Programs and organizations can build profile, attract volunteer mentors and youth by listing their details in Canada’s only national, searchable directory of mentoring providers.

Practical benefits—easily accessible

Many Mentor Canada resources are easily accessible online and can be applied immediately. Customized solutions for specific organizational needs can also be provided on request. Following are a few comments from users of Mentor Canada’s QMS service:

“The principles were something that really intrigued me. Being intentional and outcomes-focused were the ones that really struck me.”

“It definitely gave us a lot of new ideas and things that we need to further develop. It helped improve a lot of our practices.”

“It made me think. It caused me to critically think about the inclusivity of the program.”

“I feel like that entire experience was incredibly beneficial.”

“We couldn’t put it better,” emphasizes Luca-Huger. “Truly, this is our purpose: to equip those at the frontlines of supporting youth with the best mentoring resources, supports and tools so they can bring the power of mentoring directly to youth in their communities.”

Visit mentorcanada.ca to explore what Mentor Canada offers.

Tracy Luca-Huger is Executive Director at Mentor Canada. Leveraging her extensive consulting experience, as well as past senior roles at leading charities, she is galvanizing a vast network of change-makers—across sectors and regions, private industry and public institutions—to deliver on the promise of assured access to mentors for any young person, anywhere in Canada. An ongoing contributor to Alberta Mentoring Partnership and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada, Tracy is adept at focusing her team on developing innovative mentoring programs, tools, partnerships and collaborations. tracy.luca-huger@mentorcanada.ca