Jump-Start Mentoring & Coaching
Our mentoring and coaching initiative aims to engage and educate tweens and teens through interactive trainings and workshops.
Our workshops and trainings are delivered virtually via zoom or in-person; and typically 1-2 hours facilitated by trained professionals and youth coaches. We not only strive to coach and mentor the youth, but we also provide learning opportunities for parents, teachers, and other adults who are involved in the life of the youth. Additionally, we create opportunities for tweens and teens to take educational field trips.
We address a variety of topics to equip our young people with skills to make informed decisions, solve problems, think critically and creatively, communicate effectively, build healthy relationships, empathize with others, and cope with managing their lives in a healthy and productive manner.
The Benefits of Youth Mentoring& Coaching
Research shows that youth mentoring by non-parent adults:
- Models positive social skills and facilitates interpersonal connections beyond family.
- Helps young people interpret and manage life challenges, including relationships with peers and parents.
- Facilitates meaningful conversations that boost cognitive skills and provides perspective.
- Strengthens self-regulation, one’s ability to manage emotions and impulses—to think before acting.
- Promotes identity development, a key task of adolescence, through modeling core qualities that contribute to human thriving, like empathy, curiosity, resourcefulness, and resilience.
Meet Latressa
LaTressa Moses was born on December 2 to Lorren and Helen Moses. She is the youngest of four daughters who are all natives of Ocilla, Georgia. LaTressa graduated from Irwin County High School in 2004.
Beyond high school, LaTressa attended South Georgia State College and obtained an Associate of Science Degree. Upon completion of her A.S. degree, she enrolled in Walden University where she earned a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology and Masters Degree in Human Services. In addition to obtaining her credentials in the aforementioned areas of study, Latressa has spent most of her professional years in the mental health and developmental disabilities disorders fields. Within these career disciplines, she has worked closely with both adolescents and adults who have individual exceptionalities. Along the same lines, she currently serves as a teacher for students that requires alternative learning strategies in the post-secondary setting. Her life lends itself to her personal vision for the youth today.
Growing up as a teen in an impoverished community, LaTressa encountered and experienced many difficult obstacles where learning personal lessons were a norm; in retrospect, through trial and error as a youth herself, LaTressa learned lessons that many young people deal with on a daily basis. In turn, she now tries to enable the youth in similar communities as the one she grew up in. Hence, Latressa is the Founder and Program Director of S.T.E.M 101, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization. The organization, established in 2014, encourages the youth of her community and other surrounding communities through meaningful initiatives to promote growth mindsets, practices to assist with critical decision-making and methods for understanding self-assurance. LaTressa’s overall mission is to empower as many young people as possible to ensure that each can discover his or her power, purpose and potential.
