REP Youth Mentoring Volunteer

Background: 

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. At work in over 45 countries and 29 U.S. cities to restore safety, dignity and hope, the IRC leads the way from harm to home. Domestically, our 29 offices across the U.S. ensure new arrivals have food, shelter, and clothing, and work with refugees to help them gain self-sufficiency.

Scope of Work: The IRC’s Refugees Empowering Peers (REP) Mentoring program is an after-school program for high-school aged refugees. The program takes place on high school campuses throughout the Sacramento region once a week for 90 minutes and runs for 10 consecutive weeks. The program provides a safe and healing space for newly arrived youth to be around youth have gone through similar experiences. The curriculum is designed to teach refugee youth the life skills needed to build a strong foundation in the US, including: US school schedule and grading system, extracurricular opportunities, US holidays and celebration of cultures, and how to apply to college. The program is run through a cohort model and the first hour is spent completing the lesson and interactive activities as a group. For the final thirty minutes of the session, volunteers will be assigned a small group of youth to work one-on-one with on lessons, goal-setting, and overall mentoring.

Responsibilities:

• Student-centered mentoring:
  • Meet with a small “Mentor Group” of 2-5 youth for 30 minutes each week to review curriculum;
  • Develop a goal map with each youth in the Mentor Group;
  • Review goal maps weekly with youth and connect curriculum to goal maps to create action steps;
  • Support the creation of a safe and healing learning environment in which youth can learn and grow;
• Time requirements:
  • Each volunteer is required to commit to a minimum of one campus. Each campus will meet on the same established day and time each week for 10 total weeks (while we aim for these weeks to be consecutive, due to school schedules some weeks will be skipped; consequently, it may require a 4-month commitment to complete the 10 weeks);
  • Volunteers to arrive 15 minutes before the program begins, attend the full 90-minute program, and stay for a 30-minute staff/volunteer debrief after the program; when factoring in travel time to and from the school-site, each visit will be about 2 hours;
  • If volunteers are interested in serving more than one campus, the above requirements would be multiplied, e.g. two campuses= 4 hours/week, three campuses=6 hours/week.

Requirements:

• All positions hours are within Monday-Thursday, between 2:00 and 6:00pm;
• Completion of high school or college in the US and/or currently enrolled in college;
• Experience designing and delivering student-centered instruction, including experiential assignments and exercises;
• Willingness and ability to be present at school sites throughout the Sacramento region;
• Experience, academic need and/or personal interest in instructing and mentoring of multi-national, -ethnic and –cultural groups of students between 14-18 years of age (preferred);
• Experience, academic need and/or personal interest in supporting new arrivals to better understand the US education system (preferred).

Timeline:

• January/February: Complete TB Test and Live Scans (costs covered by IRC)
• Early-mid February: Training
• February-March: REP begins! 2-6 hours/week for volunteer positions.

Standard of Professional Conduct

The IRC and the IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in the IRC Way – our Code of Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, Accountability, and Equality.

TO APPLY: Complete an online application at https://x.gldn.io/e/AABWtXY9q0b. Please submit a cover letter (including desired position, availability and motivation for applying) and resume. You will be contacted for a virtual initial interview and next steps. All volunteer and internships are part-time, unpaid positions and require a background check.

If your school requires any documentation or agreement for a volunteer or internship position, please reach out to GetInvolvedIRCSacramento@rescue.org prior to the initial interview.