Mentorship
AST Mentors serve to enrich relationships built during mentorship experiences by partnering with foster and at-risk teens to help them plan for their futures, understanding healthy boundaries and relationships, and providing a source of consistency in their lives as they transition into adulthood.
AST Mentoring
Mentoring is available for youth in foster care, ages 10-19. Our mentoring program is year-round centered around helping youth of all backgrounds and circumstances achieve their potential. Mentors offer support, counsel, and friendship while setting a positive example.
What We Offer
Life Skills & Recreation
Youth will learn hands-on life skills with their mentor and in a small group setting. They'll also have the opportunity to participate in a variety of recreational and social events.
1-on-1 Mentoring
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Resource Connections
We will connect each youth to resources in our community to ensure their needs are met for housing, education, jobs, and more
Mentors’ roles are largely determined by each teen’s needs:
Teacher: providing learning opportunities and offering valuable life experience as a guide
Role model: demonstrating exemplary behavior and offering positive values that will increase chances for success and happiness
Supporter: providing encouragement to teens as they embark on new experiences
Advocate: speaking and acting on behalf of teens and helping them access community resources
Ways You Can Help
Learn more about becoming a mentor and supporting the AST Mentoring program.
Have a foster teen that needs a mentor?
What is AST Mentoring? What is expected of a YES Mentor?
Why is mentoring needed?
1 in 2 don't finish high school
By the age of 19, 47% of Texas foster youth haven't finished high school or earned a GED. By 21, 27% still haven't finished. Seventy percent of aged out youth aspire to attend college, but only 2% of Texas former foster youth earn a college degree.
1 in 4 experience incarceration
By the age of 21, 30% of foster youth have criminal justice involvement and 25% experience incarceration. In one study, by age 26, more than 50% of young women and 80% of young men had been arrested.
1 in 3 experience homelessness
More than one-third of youth who age out will experience homelessness by the time they are 26. More than 50% of the homeless population has experience with foster care. One in three homeless teens are lured into sex trafficking within 48 hours of leaving home
“ Things are never quite as scary when you have a friend.”
- Bill Watterson
It’s our job.
It’s our job to make sure that our foster youth do not become another statistic. Through activities, bonding and communication, we aim to let our you know that they are not alone. We are the super heros that our foster youth need us to be.
Be that Hero.