Youth Mentoring Connection is a mentoring-driven youth development community that utilizes a gifts-centered and resiliency-building curriculum for the past 24 years across Greater Los Angeles. The organization is currently seeking volunteers.

YMC is backed by and in collaboration with various nonprofit, public and private partners. The organization assists over 400 marginalized L.A. youth annually through a community of mentors, staff and other partner community organizations in which youth are empowered to create a future in which they thrive.

Youth Mentoring Connection is partnering with multiple community-based organizations to implement mentoring programs running throughout 2024. Mentors join in-person programs that run for nine months and involve full group sessions the first week of the month and mentor-mentee pairs meet independently on the third week of every month. Each program occurs on the same day of the week, every other week throughout the duration of the school year. Each volunteer mentor is matched with a high school student in a safe community setting. Programs are hosted at the Youth Mentoring Connection Youth Center and other partner schools and community center organizations.

Prospective mentors complete a screening process, including an application and interview, then are invited to training, and paired with a mentee in a program launching during the same start date. YMC operates from the belief that when a caring adult mentor shows up for a young person in a consistent way, they change two lives. The gift-centered mentoring model allows for healing to begin, as mentors walk in the path together with their mentee.

Mentors only have to commit four hours a month and are asked to just show up and be real. YMC takes care of the rest. Get started with a quick application at bit.ly/ymcmentor.

YMC has been a mentoring partner to businesses, schools and community organizations since 2001 locally in Los Angeles and internationally. Hundreds of young adults every year are matched with YMC mentors and get access to a full menu of program activities. For 24 years YMC has stayed committed to transforming the lives of young adults living in at-risk communities, by caring for their wounds and shining a light on their gift through YMC’s perpetual mentoring community. In 2023, YMC moved in to its permanent home, the Urban Oasis Youth Center located at 8407 S. Vermont Ave. For information, visit youthmentoring.org or call (323)648-8548.