Who's Your Mentor?

By Janet King                            president & founder, kids.now

His name was Mr. Binnington. He was my Grade 7/8 teacher, and through the support and encouragement he gave his students to help them achieve their goals, he taught me much of what I needed to know about leadership, resilience, and the power of healthy thinking. I’m sure that you too can remember at least one caring adult from your childhood who made a difference by believing in you and helping you believe in yourself. Or, maybe your coach or mentor came later in life . There’s no expiry date on the need for mentors in our lives. read more.

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What makes a great mentor?

What qualities do you think are important for a mentor to have? Answer the online poll on our website homepage now.

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Getting kids to engage in healthy thinking...

...can make a big difference in their lives, including improving family and peer relationships. Our Healthy Thinking section offers some of our favourite tips, tools and resources to help you start a healthy thinking dialogue with a kid in your life.

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10 tips for nurturing leadership and life skills

Barbara Coloroso and parenting columnist, John Hoffman (Today’s Parent), offer top tips for families and caregivers who want to nurture life-success skills in youth. read the tips.

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Family meals for a well-balanced kid

Believe it or not, the simple act of sitting down and eating dinner with your kids more often can contribute to their positive development. Research shows the more kids eat dinner with their families, the less likely they are to smoke, drink alcohol, or use drugs, in addition to a number of other benefits. And yes, lunch counts too! read more

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Children who test the rules could have leadership potential

A new study, published in The Leadership Quarterly, has found children whose parents use a firm parenting style that still allows them to test the rules are more likely to assume leadership roles as adults. It’s a delicate balance though – ruling with an iron fist could have the opposite effect. read the article.

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Parents: Work hard on the soft skills

Adolescence is a confusing time for kids...and their parents! It’s a time when youth are developing growing autonomy from their family, and more interest in their friends. It's also a time when they're trying to figure out exactly who they are as individuals. That’s why it’s important for families and caregivers to support Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) during this challenging period. But what the heck is SEL exactly and how do you support it? find out more.

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I came, I saw, I coached

Follow volunteer kids.now coach-mentor, Mark Guilbeault, as he shares his unique coaching observations and experiences via an online diary. New entries are posted every Friday, throughout the fall/winter kids.now program. It's informative reading for anyone who has ever wondered what it's like to be a kids.now coach-mentor. read the latest entry.

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Improve your life...and someone else's

If you knew donating just 1.5 hours of the 168 you have available per week, could change 10 kids' lives forever, would you do it? Here's your opportunity! kids.now is currently planning for its spring 2010 programs and we’re looking for volunteer coach-mentors throughout Ontario, Alberta and New Brunswick. If you or someone you know, might be interested in a life-changing opportunity, visit our coaches’ corner to learn more or fill in an application.

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Understanding youth - The 'how-to' guide

If men are from Mars, and women are from Venus, kids must be from Jupiter. In an exclusive article for kids.now, New Zealand youth mentoring expert Robin Cox provides insight into the adolescent mind and shares advice on how mentors can make meaningful connections with today’s youth. read the article.

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kids.now turns 10!

This year marks our 10th year of coaching kids to make positive choices. Here’s how we celebrated this milestone:

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kids.now and friends open the TSX!

On September 28, senior management from the Jays Care Foundation, State Farm Canada and TD Bank Financial Group, joined kids.now to open the market at the Toronto Stock Exchange.  These corporate partners all made a significant financial contribution to our Power of 10 Project which will help create 100 new kids.now programs and reach our goal of helping 10,000 kids by the end of our 10th year. read more and view the photo album on Facebook.

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Party with the Jays

What 10-year old wouldn’t love to party with the Toronto Blue Jays? On September 24, kids.now did just that at a special kids.now Day, presented by Champion Sponsor, State Farm. read all about it and view the photo album on Facebook.

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An 8-page "birthday card" in Today's Parent Magazine

To help celebrate a decade of work in youth development, national magazine partner Today’s Parent donated 8-pages to our Healthy Thinking supplement in its biggest issue of the year, the September issue . The piece promoted the importance of developing leadership and life skills in Canadian youth, by featuring content, tips and resources from leading Canadian and US parenting experts. The dialogue was continued online via a special section at todaysparent.com/healthythinking. read the supplement content now. 

Printed copies of this supplement are now available.  order now.

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kidsnowcanada.org gets a facelift

To usher in our second decade of support for Canada’s youth, we decided to get a little work done…on our website and branding. See the results on our newly redesigned website at kidsnowcanada.org, a site we’re hoping will become the “go to” portal for youth development content and resources in Canada. It’s off to a good start, averaging a 225% increase in traffic just one month after the relaunch. You may have noticed that we’ve also revamped this quarterly publication as part of our rebranding activities. Feel free to drop us a line and tell us what you think. We welcome your content suggestions,

And now, in other news…

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kids.now advocates for youth

kids.now has recently helped shine the spotlight on some important issues affecting today's youth, with our participation in both Bullying Awareness Week, celebrated in November, and UN International Youth Day, held in August.

During Bullying Awareness Week we featured a daily poll question on bullying and provided bullying prevention resources for more information on on our website. Check out the results of all our daily polls and more on the Bullying Awareness Week page. kids.now was also profiled in a special bullying awareness segment on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning (see sidebar).

kids.now used UN International Youth Day 2009 to kick-off to our International Youth Day Challenge. The challenge invites Canadians to make a pledge, take action, and help support Canada’s youth – and our future – then share their plans to support youth development with kids.now. In return, we will feature pledges on our website to inspire someone else to do the same. make a pledge .

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Be part of the Power of 10 Project

There's still time to support the Power of 10 Project - a challenge to sponsors and individuals to help kids.now create 100 new kids.now programs in honour of our 10th year. We’re committed to offering our leadership and life skills program to schools and students free of charge, but we can’t expand without help from donors like you. Please donate today via CanadaHelps.org at http://bit.ly/isupportkidsnow. The first 100 people to contribute $25 or more will receive a copy of We Generation: Raising Socially Responsible Kids, by Michael Ungar, courtesy of McClelland & Stewart.

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The 12 ways of giving

Looking for other ideas to support your favourite youth development charity this holiday season? Let us count the ways… read more

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A great big THANK YOU!

With the holiday season just around the corner, and as we launch a new decade of coaching kids to make positive choices, we’d like to thank everyone for their incredible support, advice and encouragement over the years.

Thank you to all of the corporate sponsors and donors who recognize and value the importance of investing in tomorrow’s leaders. You’ve helped provide close to 10,000 kids with access to caring coach-mentors and skills that last a lifetime.

Thank you to our dedicated volunteer coach-mentors, past and present, for giving your time to be a positive adult role model for youth. Your contribution makes a profound and meaningful difference in their lives.

Thank you to our school champions who work with us to coordinate afterschool programs in their schools that will help our youth build the skills and self-confidence they need to reach their full potential.

And thank you to our circle of friends, for helping us spread the word about our programs and the importance of supporting positive youth development.

2009 has been a record-breaking year – highest number of programs, highest youth participation rate, highest volunteer participation rate - and we could not have done it without you.

On behalf of all the kids who have benefited from your support and generosity, and all of us here at kids.now, we’d like to extend our warmest wishes for a happy, healthy holiday with family and friends, and all the best in 2010.

The kids.now Team

Our 60-second gift to you:
Turn up the volume and watch it now!

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