“I Understand How People Feel When They Are Asking for Help and Nobody Is Going to Help Them”: Disadvataged Youth Describe Their Motives for Mentoring Community Children

Background and Purpose: This research occurs in the context of a project creating cross-age mentoring services and studying service impact with youth in high-poverty, high-crime neighborhoods in a Midwest urban setting. While there is knowledge about the problems youth residing in high-poverty, high-crime neighborhoods face, less is known about engaging them in services and about the youths’ prosocial motives and wishes for help.  Evidence-based models effective with privileged youth often do not suit disadvantaged youth with marginalized identities. Tailoring services to youths’ cultures and strengths so youth find services meaningful remains challenging. Improved understanding of youths’ priorities and motives for services can promote engagement and service efficacy.

Methods: The 94 mentors are a purposive sample of prosocial youth residing in the highest-crime, highest poverty areas of a large Midwestern city. While participating in mentor training at program inception, the mentors (N=94, average age 16, 65% female) wrote a letter answering the written question, “Tell us about yourself, what would you like us to know?”  The letters were scanned and analyzed qualitatively.  The researchers developed a coding manual from the first 15% of the letters using a constant comparative thematic analysis, and then developed a coding manual based on axial codes and two overall codes covering the mentors’ experience of family relationships and the quality of their hope or despair. After confirming sound inter-rater reliability the manual was used to code the remaining letters. Findings were member-checked with youth co-authors.

Results: More than 50% of the mentors expressed powerful motives to help community children, some poignantly describing how painful it was when they were suffering and no one helped them. More than half sought to acquire specific skills, including improving writing skills, learning “how to educate,” how to communicate better, and how to manage anger. These youth hoped services would help them reach their specific goals. Some worried about how to provide care to community children who they knew were suffering and whose basic needs were not met. About 28% of youth expressed serious distress about their family and lack of resources, and also that there was nowhere else to turn for help.

Conclusions and Implications: These young mentors were acutely aware that their communities lacked sufficient resources to help children and youth seeking social supports and the skills to be able to exit poverty. Most youth recognized that to exit poverty they needed to acquire specific skills, including communication and relationship skills, and they hoped services would provide that education. The youths’ letters indicate the majority experience powerful motives to help others, even when they themselves had not received similar help. Service providers can benefit from ensuring youths’ specific goals are included in service design, as well as opportunities for youth to help others, which youth find to be very meaningful. Policy-makers can benefit from understanding both the scope of youths’ unmet social and survival needs in high-poverty, high-crime communities, and also that youth are highly motivated to make effective use of social supports and provide support for others.