The Youth Mentoring Network
Established in 2006, the Youth Mentoring Network aims to work with interested youth mentoring organisations and practitioners to foster the growth and development of high quality mentoring programs for young people in Australia by providing a national base of collaboration, support, guidance and expertise. The Youth Mentoring Network is the result of a partnership of four national organisations: The Smith Family, Job Futures, Big Brothers Big Sisters Australia, and the Dusseldorp Skills Forum, which developed the initial proposal and, having committed their own funds to the project, invited the Australian Government to come on board as the fifth member of the group. (Also see the May 2004 report, 'Young People and mentoring: Towards a national strategy: A Report prepared for Big Brothers Big Sisters Australia, Dusseldorp Skills Forum and The Smith Family' by Robyn Hartley, published by The Smith Family, May 2004, ISBN: 1 876833 33 5, available on the Dusseldorp Skills Forum web site: http://www.dsf.org.au/papers/150.htm )

The Mentor Marketplace Programme
This program encourages the use of mentoring activities to improve outcomes for young people, particularly those at greatest risk of disconnection from their families, community, education and work. The Australian Government provided $12 million for the Mentor Marketplace Program over four years ending on 30 June 2009.  The program currently has funding agreements with 26 service providers across Australia. For current details about the program's operation, contact the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. (DEEWR is a member of the Youth Mentoring Network cited above. Source: DEEWR website, http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/youth/#The_Mentor_Marketplace_Program, viewed 12 January 2009.)

Big Brothers Big Sisters is a preventative program which provides young people aged 7 to 17 years with a caring adult mentor in their lives, someone to confide in and look up to. See: http://www.bbbs.org.au

The Smith Family  welfare service has a program supporting students by linking them with volunteer mentors. See their web site for information on their Tertiary Mentoring Program, which includes the programs eXLR8, Plan-IT Youth and Next Steps.

NRGIZE Workshop
http://dsf.org.au/mentortraining/
This three-day workshop helps metnors and focuses on the development of mentoring programs for youth.

The 'sister 2 sister' mentoring program matches teenage girls with mentors who are successful businesswomen or sportswomen. It's but one of the projects emerging from the Life Changing Experiences Foundation, a school-based program launched in NSW in February 2005 which teaches life skills to underprivileged youth. See: http://www.lifechangingexperiences.org

Programs:

Australia's Youth Mentoring Network has a database of youth mentoring programs across Australia. It's used by practitioners, teachers, parents, youth workers, counsellors, potential volunteers and young people themselves all looking for their local mentoring program. To register your program, follow the links from:
http://www.youthmentoring.org.au/add_program.php

Articles:

DuBois DL et al. 2002. Effectiveness of mentoring programs for youth: A meta-analytic review. American journal of community psychology, v.30, n.2, pp.157-197.

Hartley R 2004. Young people and mentoring: towards a national strategy. A report prepared for Big Brothers Big Sisters Australia, Dusseldorp Skills Forum and The Smith Family. Sydney: The Smith Family http://www.smithfamily.com.au/documents/tsf_Mentor_May04_85540.pdf

Mentoring Australia 2000. Mentoring: benchmarks for effective and responsible mentoring programs http://www.dsf.org.au/mentor/benchmark.htm

Crime Prevention Branch of the Attorney-General's Department 2003. Early intervention: Youth mentoring programs: An overview of mentoring programs for young people at risk of offending (ISBN 0 642 21098 5) This 2003 report provides a national profile of mentoring programmes for young people at risk of offending and highlights different approaches, models and good practice in the field. The report is available in hard copy by phoning the Crime Prevention Branch of the Attorney-General's Department, toll-free number: 1800 708 777, or by downloading it as a PDF document (http://www.ag.gov.au/agd/WWW/ncphome.nsf/Page/Publications or follow the links from: http://tinyurl.com/2hpnw) The study team for the report were Urbis Keys Young's Dr Ania Wilczynski and Clare Culvenor together with Assoc. Prof. Chris Cunneen, Director of the Institute of Criminology at the University of Sydney Law School, John Schwartzkoff, director of Urbis Keys Young, and Kerry Reed-Gilbert, principal consultant at Kuracca Consultancy. National Crime Prevention 2003.