Why One Beloved Community (1BC)?
1BC is the mentoring component of AUYD. You don’t have to search long through national and local data to find out that risky youth behavior is a direct result of fatherless homes; even the White House has started an initiative to combat this. Mentoring has become a big business, with many wonderful and powerful organizations offering mentoring help to at risk boys and girls.
The name and DNA of the program comes from Martin Luther King’s idea of what he called The Beloved Community. You can read more about that here and here.
Advent believes that most of these programs sometimes require boys and girls to wait to long before a match is found. Our special niche in the mentoring world is group mentoring combined with one-on-one and peer-to-peer mentoring. One man or woman can make a huge impact in the lives of many children. Our groups generally start at 8-12 students. Not only does this approach allow for more children to be mentored by an adult, but it also allows children to interact in a group setting and depend on their peer community for support. The group dynamic is a powerful and challenging task, yet much can be learned from bringing together children and youth from different neighborhoods and backgrounds.
Our goal is for mentors and students to stay with their group through high school graduation. We then hope that many of the students choose to reinvest in their community as mentors.
1BC (One Beloved Community) is Advent’s own flavor of mentoring. Our concept on mentoring is not only one-on-one, but community or group mentoring as well.
We serve as many boys and girls as we can, mostly from teacher, counselor, and community referrals. We believe through these unique mentoring programs, youth can engage in not only group environments, but also small groups and one-on-one situations.
We believe that as youth are mentored and empowered in these programs, communities can transform as they participate in their own liberation.
The students’ individual mentors check up on them throughout the week and communicate with school counselors, teachers, and parents about how their mentee is doing.
These students are transported to and from meetings by their mentors to participate in physical activities and group social skill development. Afterwards they usually split up into their small groups to have a more intimate discussion. Lastly, the students and mentors eat together at each meeting.
If you are interested in mentoring in one of these groups, please contact us at ryanmurphy@auyd.org
