Search Institute and Mentoring Partnership of Minnesota received a grant from the Carlson Family Foundation in 2010, which allowed them to create training and resources for mentors based on Search Institute’s new research on thriving and sparks.
So, what is a spark?
A spark is something that gives a person’s life meaning and purpose, and discovering and nurturing teenagers’ sparks helps them succeed.
The research highlights the importance of caring adults who can support a young person in the quest to find and develop a spark. And a mentoring relationship is a great place to shape conversations and activities to support the exploration of sparks – for both the mentee and the mentor.
Research on mentoring effectiveness indicates that the duration and quality of those relationships is key to achieving positive outcomes. Engaging in conversations about each others’ sparks can be the starting point for building a great relationship and can provide a spot to come back to again and again.
Mentoring Partnership of Minnesota has incorporated sparks concepts and resources into trainings, and has piloted the training in Northfield, MN, with college-age mentors, and in the Twin Cities with mentors working through Big Brothers Big Sisters and other local mentoring programs.
Here’s what some of the training participants had to say about what they took away from the sparks-based trainings:
“The most important thing I took away from it was that a mentor should focus on the child’s strengths, and not his or her risk factors. A mentor’s job is not to fix the problems, but to help the child achieve his or her potential. Helping children identify a spark, and encouraging them to follow and feed those sparks, is a great way to focus on the child’s special gifts, which in turn may help the child rise above those risk factors.”
“I really appreciated that the facilitator said, ‘We, as mentors, are not there to fix our mentees.’ I think we are there for support, encouragement, and to provide a good role model. The training also made me think of topics such as emphasizing positive characteristics and helping our mentees find their passion for future Kids ‘n Kinship mentor meetings.”April Riordan, Director of Training and Community Partnerships at Mentoring Partnership of Minnesota, has delivered the pilot trainings and will continue to make them available to mentoring programs that want to add sparks to their work.
“Over the past two years, the sparks workshops by Search Institute staff have been the highest attended workshops at MPM’s Annual Conferences. The response to the new training from mentoring programs, especially Big “Brothers and Big Sisters, has been incredible. Because it is a strength-based approach, sparks helps mentoring programs offer better ongoing trainings for their mentors.”
