Youth Mentoring Youth: A Spotlight on Our Peer Mentorship Program

There is a particular kind of trust that forms between young people who have lived similar lives. When a teenager who arrived in Louisville as a refugee sits down with a ten-year-old who just arrived last month, something happens that no adult mentor can fully replicate. They see each other. They understand each other. And that understanding becomes the foundation for something powerful.

That is the idea behind More Than A Smile Foundation’s Youth Peer Mentorship & Leadership program — and it is working.

How the Program Works

The Youth Peer Mentorship & Leadership program pairs older youth, typically ages 14 to 18, with younger participants in our programs. Mentors are trained to lead, listen, and show up consistently. They meet with their mentees during program sessions, check in between events, and serve as visible examples of what is possible.

For the mentors, the program is as much about their own development as it is about the younger kids they serve. They learn how to communicate, how to lead a group, how to handle conflict, and how to take responsibility. Many of them go on to take on larger leadership roles within the foundation and in their schools.

For the mentees, having an older peer who looks like them, speaks their language, and has navigated the same systems is irreplaceable. It tells them: you can do this. Someone already did.

What We’ve Seen

This past year, mentors in the program led workshops, facilitated group activities at Engagement Nights, and spoke at the Beyond the Smile Annual Conference. Several mentees who joined the program two or three years ago are now mentors themselves — a cycle of leadership that grows stronger every year.

We have watched quiet kids find their voice. We have watched teenagers who were struggling in school start showing up differently — more confident, more connected, more willing to ask for help.

That does not happen by accident. It happens because someone believed in them first.

Why Peer Mentorship Matters for Immigrant and Refugee Youth

Immigrant and refugee youth face a specific kind of pressure. They are often navigating two worlds at once — the expectations of their family and culture at home, and the demands of a new country, a new school system, and a new social landscape outside. That pressure can be isolating.

Peer mentorship does not solve all of that. But it gives young people a space where they do not have to explain themselves. Where the navigation is shared. Where someone else has already drawn the map.

More Than A Smile Foundation is committed to building that kind of community — not just between adults and youth, but between young people themselves.

If you want to support this program or learn more about how your organization can partner with us, visit our Invest page or reach out directly.