Christian Association of Youth Mentoring (CAYM) offers comprehensive service and membership programs aimed at starting or improving and expanding mentoring programs. CAYM wants to help organizations with common challenges faced by mentoring programs, such as recruitment, training, retention of mentors, and the effectiveness of mentor-mentee matches. CAYM also offers ways to reduce program costs which impact sustainability and program growth. The approach is multifaceted, providing resources and support across several key areas:

• Growth of Mentoring Programs: To grow your mentoring program, leveraging CAYM's resources like training videos, readings, and access to best practices can be invaluable. Focused recruitment strategies and mentor orientation training can help expand your mentor base effectively.

• Long-term Maintenance of Mentoring Matches: The emphasis on match supervision and the provision of advanced training topics for ongoing mentor development are crucial. These resources can help in maintaining the quality and longevity of mentoring relationships.

• Starting Mentors Off Well: The "5 Tips to Help Mentors Start Well" resource guide is designed to ensure mentors are well-prepared from the beginning. CAYM’s mentor orientation training, which is used across the United States and in other countries, also plays a critical role in this area.

• Enhancing Mentor Effectiveness: To enhance mentor effectiveness, CAYM offers advanced training topics and resources like developing resilience in mentees and connecting protégés to social capital. These resources aim to equip mentors with the skills and knowledge they need to be more impactful

• Cost Reduction: CAYM’s method of building church partners with volunteer teams can reduce staff time in recruiting, screening, and match supervision. This results in an overall reduction in cost per match. 

• Supporting Mentee Success: Ensuring mentors are well-equipped directly supports mentee success and prepares the mentor for the challenges unique to their mentor.

• Safety: Our commitment to safety ensures mentoring organizations have the tools and knowledge necessary to implement effective safety measures. It emphasizes targeted recruiting, effective screening, and CAYM's holistic approach to supporting mentoring programs, combining the nurturing of strong mentor-mentee bonds with the stringent safeguarding of all participants' welfare.

** must keep membership in good standing from initial QA certification till time of review to be eligible for this offer

CAYM membership, coupled with tailored consulting and advanced training topics, provides a robust framework for enhancing the effectiveness of mentoring programs. Our three service and membership programs help you to build and sustain your ministry, as well as certify that you are following evidence-based best practices of safe, effective, and sustainable mentoring.

Membership requirements: 

We are looking to help ministries that have four characteristics:
1.  They are faithfully following Jesus Christ in accordance with the Bible.
2.  They are committed to making disciples who will be life-long followers of Jesus.
3.  They are committed to working through and with the local churches to fulfill their mission.
4.  They have received CAYM certification and Quality Assurance review that they are following and committed to faithfully following CAYM best practices to ensure thta their ministry is safe, effective, and sustainable. 

Steps to apply and start:
1.  Fill out the application below.
3.  Once your application is complete, we will conduct at least one online interview with you where we will:
       a. Learn about your desires for membership
       b. Answer any questions you have about CAYM membership
4. If your ministry and CAYM are in agreement, we will:

1. Semd an invoice for the membership fee
2. Send a membership agreement for you to sign
3. When paid, we will send you a link to connect to our training site.
4. Setup a zoom meeting to discuss how we can server your program.