KEY POINTS:
New Zealand's biggest youth mentoring programme, Project K, is running out of men.
The programme, founded in 1995 by mountaineer Graeme Dingle and his partner Jo-anne Wilkinson, attracted only one man to its last mentor training course in Auckland.
Nationally, it had to use women to mentor 44 of its 174 male students last year as well as all 122 female students, even though it aims to match men with boys and women with girls.
Auckland mentor inquiries co-ordinator Lisa Easte said men often had the wrong idea about what mentoring involved. "Lots of males think the whole mentoring role is rather like a counselling role, which it isn't," she said.
"If there are issues that need counselling we'll get that for the young person, but it's more about spending time with them doing activities, be that sporting or going to watch them play sports or hanging out with them at the movies or whatever the mentor is into."
The programme chooses six boys and six girls from year 10 classes in each participating high school. Participants are chosen on the basis that they have relatively low beliefs in their abilities to do well at school, form friendships, seek adult help and make good career decisions.
They go on a 10-day wilderness adventure and then spend a year "giving something back" to the community and meeting with an adult mentor once a fortnight to help them set and achieve goals and provide a "friendly ear".
"Lots of research shows that if there is a stable adult outside the family, that increases young people's resiliency, which then helps them deal with stuff going on in their life," Ms Easte said. "For a lot of the students in the programme, they may or may not have a male parent in the house, and sometimes the parents are really time-poor so they don't have a lot of time to spend with their kids." Takapuna Grammar student Andrew Robertson, 16, who was paired in year 10 last year with airline pilot Alan Stewart, 40, said Mr Stewart helped him get his driver's licence and work out how to pursue a career as a chef. He is now studying food technology and has a part-time job as a kitchen-hand at McHughs restaurant in Cheltenham.
"We went to the movies a couple of times, we went rock-climbing and driving and biked around Mission Bay and went to the pools and stuff," he said. "We also went to a few concerts. I had never been to a concert before."
His marks improved in English and maths, partly because of the public speaking he had to do at Project K events. "Instead of worrying about the things I can't do, they got me thinking that I can do things - thinking of the good things, not the bad," he said.
Mr Stewart, who has two daughters aged 6 and 9, said he had "no idea" about the way teenagers operated before, but he wanted to "give something back" to the community.
"I didn't even know what young teenagers are about these days," he said. "But what kids need is your time, that's all - time, and someone to show an interest in them. That's what it's about."
Although his year's commitment is over, he said he would keep in touch.
"I don't know what the future holds but I'm not going to just drop Andrew and say, 'It's been nice knowing you for a year, good luck'."
* The next mentor training course starts in Takapuna on July 19. Phone 09 445 9701, www.projectk.org.nz
