The Elizabeth Fry Society of Calgary
Website: Visit
Main Contact: youthmentor@elizabethfrycalgary.ca
Tel: (403) 294-0737
Address: 1731 10 Ave SW, Calgary, AB, Calgary, AB, T3C 0K1
About
For over 50 years, Elizabeth Fry has offered a hand up to thousands of women in the Calgary community, providing practical programs, basic necessities and connections to community resources, all with the goal of creating more hopeful futures. Hundreds of years ago, this was the vision of Elizabeth Fry, a passionate advocate for those without a voice and a champion of prison reform for women. We are honoured to carry on her legacy. The women we serve all have unique stories, but they are linked together by the common themes of poverty, abuse, addiction and trauma. It is this cycle of poverty that must be addressed and broken for lasting change to occur. Furthermore, we have developed a Youth Mentorship Program that focuses on intervention and prevention in order to aid indigenous and immigrant youth who have criminal justice involvement. Criminal justice involvement typically entails a charge or a conviction.
Region
Calgary & Area.
Program Description
Our goal is to match youth with an appropriate mentor who can help them deal with their specific needs. It’s very heavily contextualized; each youth has specific needs, some need help accessing community resources, some need help with life skills development (applying for post-secondary, educational development, some need help accessing resources such as transit passes, and some just simply need someone to talk to.) We understand that many youths do not have the resources and support systems they need. We ask our mentors for a one-year minimum commitment, to what a match looks like; in the first 3 months, we ask for our mentors to commit to 6-8 hours a month to build a strong connection and instil consistency into the youth’s lives. We match mentors and mentees based on personality, interest, and distance.
Areas of Focus
- One to one
- Peer mentoring
- Cross-age Mentoring
- E-mentoring
- Informal
- Formal
Ages of Children and Youth Served
- 11-18
Special Populations
- Aboriginal Children/Youth
- Girls/Women
- Boys/Men