Adult professional women are recruited to the IAMP to serve as Life Guides/Mentors to either justice-involved women or female survivors of domestic violence. IAMP volunteers help our clients to succeed personally and professionally.
All volunteers who participate as Life Guides/Mentors are required to complete a 4 hour basic training workshop prior to their first match. Additional training is required for volunteers who serve as Life Guides/Mentors to justice-involved women. Our IAMP training curriculum covers organizational and programmatic information; key process skills such as active listening, trust building, interpersonal communications, strategies for encouraging mentees, developmental versus prescriptive mentoring and empowering versus enabling mentoring; the steps of the formal mentoring process; IAMP forms; a module on the characteristics of justice-involved women and domestic violence victims and the issues facing this population; information on local community resources; and general information about the criminal justice system.
Following completion of the initial basic training workshop, each volunteer is expected to attend quarterly 2-hour support group sessions. Each two-hour session is designed both as a time for sharing the challenges and successes of each mentor and as an opportunity to expose mentors to topics and issues that impact our primary target populations.
All IAMP volunteers are expected to devote a minimum of two hours per month to the program and commit to working with a client for at least six months. Trained volunteers will be matched with participants on age and other life experiences.
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