These resources are provided to aid in your exploration of "disability mentoring" to assist in the implementation or participation by your organization or employees. Please email us suggestions to add to the resource list to ensure we offer appropriate suggestions to representative the diverse models and offerings to increase inclusion and independence through mentoring for youth and adults with disabilities.
Several organizations provide guidance and manuals to help organizations build more inclusive mentoring practices and programs. Although some of the materials are designed for providing services to youth, the principles are extractable for all mentoring programs.
National Center for Workforce Development for Youth
The USDA Mentoring Program is designed to facilitate the learning process and offer experiences that will assist protégés in understanding and fulfilling their career potential. It is a voluntary program that benefits both employees and USDA by fostering career relationships and the exchange of career information between mentors and protégés. Mentors can provide numerous benefits to protégés, including but not limited to:
Mentoring is a term generally used to describe a relationship between a less experienced individual, called a mentee or protégé, and a more experienced individual known as a mentor. Traditionally, mentoring is viewed as a dyadic, face-to-face, long-term relationship between a supervisory adult and a novice student that fosters the mentee’s professional, academic, or personal development (Donaldson, Ensher, & Grant-Vallone, 2000).
USDA recognizes the importance of "connecting" with youth, applicants, and current employees with disabilities and believes these connections will be strengthened by recognizing the importance of mentoring to build talent pipelines and to promote career advancement. In order to design and implement enhanced mentoring efforts, USDA's Disability Program and Mentoring Program are working closely to create more mentoring opportunities that may lead to USDA employment for youth and adults with disabilities.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Office of Human Resources Management (OHRM) and the Office of Operations TARGET Center partnered with the National Disability Mentoring Coalition (NDMC) to create this online mentoring toolkit. The site is a central hub for USDA, federal agencies and others interested in leveraging mentoring to support the recruitment, placement, retention and advancement of individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in the workforce.
