Why We Launched An Anti-Racism Education Program

By Celine Patel, Chief External Officer, iMentor

At iMentor, we work with nearly 9,000 volunteer mentors across the country who commit to building a long-term relationship with a student. Our volunteers are driven by a genuine desire to support students in their community. The majority of iMentor students identify as people of color and will be the first in their family to attend college, and having a powerful mentoring relationship in their ecosystem of support helps to ensure their success in college and career.

We know that mentoring has many benefits, especially for young people planning the rest of their life. Increased social capital and higher rates of college enrollment are just two examples. Our mentors are a wellspring of experience, resources, and networks that can help a student excel in their career. Our program leverages that mentoring relationship to pave a more equitable pathway for students to their goals.

But it is vital that we train and equip our mentors to be true allies to young people of color, and that they are not–even unintentionally–perpetuating deeply rooted, racist narratives that hold students back from achieving their ambitions.

iMentor, and all organizations that depend on volunteers, can no longer be bystanders and perpetuate these harmful narratives. We need to combat them and help our volunteers think about race, about the intersection of equity and education, and about the systemic inequities that our students and their families face –as well as the type of support that can enable students to carve their successful paths in school and their careers. If we do not, we are doing a disservice to our students, our volunteers, and our country.

Much of the informal education around equity issues our volunteers receive has historically come from the mentees themselves. In a recent survey, 91 percent of our mentors shared that their relationships with their mentees have helped them develop a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by students from marginalized communities. These relationships invite mentors to broaden their world view and increase their empathy and understanding. They help make issues of equity personal.

But it shouldn’t be left to mentees to educate their mentors on such critical issues.

We have a responsibility to accelerate this education with a more explicit and structured framework. We must help our volunteers understand systemic inequalities and how they impact people of color.

At iMentor, we have begun this work. In the short-term, we believe anti-racism education programming will make our mentors more informed and more effective in their work with their mentee. In the long-term, our mentors will be more likely to continue as lifelong advocates for equity –for their mentees, but also in their communities and workplaces.

iMentor officially launched our anti-racism education program in 2020, developed in partnership with the Perception Institute and funded by Bloomberg LP. In our first year of mentor education, more than800 mentors attended at least one training, and in our second year –which is currently underway –more than 1,500 mentors have already attended a training. Mentors in our education program are learning about topics ranging from asset-based thinking to the challenge of stereotype threat for our students.

Haemi Lim, a volunteer mentor with iMentor NYC, notes that the anti-racism education program has helped to shift how she relates to her mentee.

“When we were matched, a big goal was to improve her English,” Haemi said. “Participating in this Mentor Education Program has helped me reframe the conversation as ‘Wow, you’re bilingual! You speak two languages!’ It’s framing things around her strengths, and not around what she might be perceived as lacking.”

Haemi said her personal growth in this area has “absolutely made me a better mentor, a better leader, more empathetic—just a better person.”

After two years of mentor education trainings and thousands of hours of conversations with mentors, we have learned many lessons. I continue to come back to these three:

1. Diversity, equity and inclusion needs to be everyone’s job. We chose to remove the burden we saw being placed on mentors of color so that they were not in the position of having to share their trauma with others as a “lesson.” We chose to ground these sometimes uncomfortable conversations in scenarios related to the mentoring relationship so that all mentors –no matter their background or level of knowledge on these issues –can participate in a meaningful way.
2. Diversity training must be an ongoing commitment to learning and growth, not a one-time engagement. We saw the highest participation and engagement from mentors when these conversations were part of expected and consistent training events. Consistency of engagement allowed mentors to have a common language to name and continue to talk about this work in between the monthly events.
3. This work is necessary. Educating volunteer mentors on diversity, equity and inclusion issues is challenging, but it must take place if we want to create real change. As then-Senator Obama said in 2008, “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

It gives me great hope to see 9,000 mentors stepping up each year to be that change. I deeply believe that relationships can be the foundation for structural change. Now it is our responsibility to give mentors the understanding and tools they need to make those relationships successful. I hope that collectively we can learn from each other and hold each other accountable as we look to create a more equitable society for the next generation of leaders.

Celine Patel is iMentor’s chief external officer. Celine pivoted from a career in finance to join the iMentor team after being inspired by what was possible when she saw firsthand the impact mentoring could have on first-generation college students. She continues to be a mentor, lives in Brooklyn and is currently pursuing her Executive Masters of Public Administration at NYU.