Be a Mentor

The Governor's Mentoring Partnership

Since 1995, over 493,000 mentor matches have provided support to California's youth through mentor programs. Yet tens of thousands of young people are still waiting for a mentor. The Governor's Mentoring Partnership (GMP), formerly the California Mentoring Initiative under Governor Wilson (Executive Order W-132-1996) was created to provide continuing support for California's youth through mentoring. The goal of GMP is to encourage strong collaborations regionally to involve whole communities in mentoring efforts to assist our youth.

Mentoring is defined as a relationship between two or more people where older, wiser, more experienced

individuals provide support and guidance to a minor whose environment increases his/her chance of exposure to teen pregnancy, academic failure, gangs and violence, use of alcohol and drugs, and other at risk behavior.

The GMP works in partnership with over 700 California community based mentoring programs such as Big Brothers/Big Sisters, Boys and Girls Clubs and other mentoring coalitions.

How Mentoring Helps

Studies provide data reflecting the powerful impact of a caring adult, in addition to one's parents, on a young person's life. Research shows that youth involved in mentoring activities were significantly more likely to develop attitudes and habits that help ensure success.

Mentoring leave is paid leave time, which may only be used by an employee to mentor. This leave does not count as time worked for purposes of overtime. Mentoring leave may not be used for travel to and from the mentoring location.

An employee must use an equal number of hours of his/her personal time (annual leave, vacation, personal leave, personal holiday, or CTO during the workday, and/or personal time during non-working hours) prior to requesting mentoring leave. For example, if an employee requested two hours of mentor leave, he/she must have used two verified hours of his/her personal time prior to receiving approval for the mentoring leave. Mentoring leave does not have to be requested in the same week or month as the personal time used. It does, however, have to be requested and used before the end of the calendar year.

In Order To Be Eligible For Mentoring Leave, An Employee Must:

Have a permanent appointment
Have successfully completed their initial probationary period; and
Have committed to mentor a child or youth through a mentoring organization that meets the quality assurance standards, for a minimum of one school year. (Most programs are aligned with the child's normal school year; however, there may be some that are less or more. Department management may make exceptions to the one school year commitment based on the mentor program that was selected).