A Note From Our Staff

​A Year of Virtual Mentoring

This month marks a year since the pandemic began, in which we’re still going through. It’s been a year of figuring out zoom meetings, working from home, loss and of course in our case a year of virtual mentoring. Let’s rewind a bit – at this time last year I was at the end of my maternity leave and feeling a mix of emotions. I was anxious on how my work life would look and how as a program we would be able to sustain effective mentoring especially since the “outside world” shut down so quickly. Peer groups quickly canceled along with mentor trainings and we were all forced to figure out our new normal. 

While in-person mentoring came to a halt, the many amazing friendships built in our program did not. Mentoring is essential and is an important aspect of so many of our youth’s lives that not going full speed into virtual mentoring wasn’t an option but a necessity. The BEST Kids community all relied on each other to make virtual mentoring work and worthwhile. BEST Kids staff got to work and quickly came up with a list of virtual activities that included activities such as virtual tours of Museums and video/iPhone games for our matches to indulge in. While staff began to create a foundation of what virtual mentoring should look like, our matches immersed in it.

I have to be honest, it was tough in the beginning for a lot of our matches. We had youth who didn’t have consistent Wi-Fi or have laptops to make it easy for them to connect with their mentors but we somehow navigated through all of these challenges.  Laptops were donated and resources around our community became available for Wi-Fi services along with other resources for our youth. Our matches knocked down these barriers and awesome moments came out of it. We had matches compete in push up challenges over facetime, matches connecting over the phone almost every day, weekly zoom meetings that were full of fun games, we had matches who discussed Presidential debates over text and we even had new matches start virtually.

Virtual mentoring was different but it’s allowed not only our matches but the BEST Kids program as a whole a moment to explore a different way of connecting.  While we can’t wait to see each other’s faces without masks and In-person, I think we can all say we’ve learned a few things during virtual mentoring - and not just how to take ourselves off mute - but lessons we can cherish and grow from. One thing I’ve always known but was made clear this past year is that the BEST Kids community is and continues to be resilient, beyond committed, and creative (virtually and in-person)!​

Ashley Shepard
BEST Kids Staff
​Assistant Program Director