Durham Youth Mentoring Alliance: Breaking Barriers & Empowering Black & Brown Youth

Youth Mentoring Collaborative (YMC) partnered with the Durham Office on Youth (OOY) and a core group of youth-serving organizations and Youth Ambassadors to facilitate the creation of the Durham Youth Mentoring Alliance. This initiative will bring together mentoring organizations, young people, and community members across Durham to remove barriers to collaboration between organizations, expand access to evidence-based mentoring for young people, and create opportunities that all Durham youth and families need to improve their overall quality of life.

The City of Durham Office on Youth (OOY) is a division in the City Manager’s Office at the City of Durham. The OOY is an intergenerational team, nurturing spaces of belonging where young people ages 13-24 can dream and co-create a Durham that represents them. They work to cultivate youth leadership in decision-making spaces across Durham and spark cultural shifts in how we engage young people as partners. They also support the Changed by Youth Ambassadors and administer the Durham Youth Leadership Fund to grow youth leadership in Durham and invest in the needs and dreams of young people.

Youth Mentoring Collaborative (YMC) is a capacity-building organization dedicated to increasing the number of black and brown youth in identity-affirming mentoring relationships while working to dismantle the systemic barriers that youth and their families face daily. This includes providing training, resources, public awareness, and advocacy that support the expansion of mentoring initiatives that promote the health and well-being of young people and families most impacted by systems of oppression.