Weekly · by appointmentAges 11–17Free · by application
Some things a fifteen-year-old will not bring to you. That is not a failure.
Structured one-to-one and small-group time with a trained Steward: someone close enough to remember being their age, and far enough ahead to be worth asking. With limits we state out loud before anyone sits down.
- Cost
- Free · by application
- To sign up
- Free NEXGEN account required
- Next step
- Apply, we will talk it through first
- If cost is the problem
- Ask us, there is a scholarship fund How it works
Where the limit is
What “private” means here, including where it stops.
What a young person says to their mentor stays between them. There are four exceptions, and we tell every young person all four before their first conversation, not after something has been said.
A concern that they are being harmed or are unsafe at home. Telling us they intend to hurt themselves. A risk that someone else could be harmed. Any other serious, immediate threat to safety.
In those situations a mentor involves a parent and, where the law requires it, the authorities. We would rather a young person know exactly where that line is than discover it at the worst possible moment.
What this is not
Mentoring is not therapy, and a mentor is not a therapist.
A mentor offers perspective, attention and consistency. They are not licensed mental-health professionals and this is not counselling, saying otherwise would be the single most dangerous thing this page could do.
When a young person needs clinical support, our job is to help a family find it quickly, not to stand in the way of it by being a cheaper substitute.
If you are worried about your child right now, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. In an emergency, 911.
How it is run
The rules that make a private conversation safe.
These are not aspirations. They are the operating rules, and they are the same ones published on the safety page.
It happens in the open
An open area, or a room with an interior window and the door unlocked. A mentor is never alone with a young person behind a closed, opaque door, and never off-site or alone in a car with them.
Contact runs through NEXGEN
Never a mentor’s personal phone and never private DMs. Messages between sessions go through NEXGEN channels with a parent copied.
Every mentor is screened first
The full three-part New York check: Statewide Central Register, fingerprint-based state and federal criminal history, national sex-offender registry. Cleared before any unsupervised contact, and re-run on a cycle.
A young person can stop, any time
No explanation owed, no conversation about why, no effect on anything else they do here. They can also ask for a different mentor.
Why a near-peer
Someone a few steps ahead, not a few decades.
Parents stay parents. Scholars stay scholars. Teachers stay teachers. A mentor is doing a different job from all three, and it only works because of the distance: close enough to remember the group chat, the double life and the question about deen they were too embarrassed to ask, far enough ahead to have an answer worth hearing.
Our mentors are Stewards: NEXGEN’s 18–29s, trained for this specifically rather than volunteering into it.
This does not replace you. It is the conversation that happens on the walk to the car, about the thing they were not going to mention.
How it starts
From request to first conversation.
It is an application rather than a booking, because matching matters more than speed.
- 1
You ask
A parent or the young person themselves gets in touch. Either is fine, a young person does not need to go through a parent to ask.
- 2
We talk first
A short conversation about what is going on and what would actually help. Sometimes the honest answer is that a mentor is not the right tool, and we will say so.
- 3
We match deliberately
To a Steward whose background and temperament fit, not to whoever is free. A mismatch is worse than a wait.
- 4
It runs, or it does not
Weekly by appointment. If it is not working after a few, we change the mentor or stop. That is a normal outcome, not a failure.
If you are the one who might come
They are not going to tell your mum what you said.
Unless you are in danger, or someone else is. That is the whole list, and you will be told it to your face before you say anything, so nothing gets repeated back to you later as a surprise.
It is not a lecture and it is not a report. You do not have to have a problem to book one. Plenty of it is just school, what you might do next, something you are annoyed about, or a question about deen you would rather not ask in a room full of people.
You can stop coming whenever you want and nobody will make it awkward.
Before you ask
The questions parents ask.
Nothing. It is free, and it is by application rather than by booking so that we can match properly.
No commitment in asking
Start with a conversation about whether this is even the right thing.
Tell us roughly what is going on. Sometimes the answer is a mentor, sometimes it is Friday Nights, and sometimes it is a referral somewhere we cannot go. All three are useful answers.