Organizational Background

The Youth Mentoring Action Network (YMAN) is a youth empowerment organization facilitating transformative mentoring, education, and wellness opportunities with young people. Rooted in the Inland Empire of Southern California, YMAN was founded in 2007 by two veteran educators who understood the importance of providing young people with loving and affirming spaces, opportunities to freedom dream, and resources to shape their futures.

With a focus on providing academic and life-centered support via critical mentoring services, YMAN has been able to serve over 2,600 young people with a broad range of programming that incorporates STEAM-focused arts, health and wellness initiatives, and civic engagement opportunities.

Critical mentoring is at the heart of YMAN’s work. It is an innovative perspective that reframes the mentoring experience as a youth-centered one, with an emphasis on race, ethnicity, class, citizenship, gender, and sexuality in identity development, understanding, and acceptance. Focus is placed on curating spaces where young people can fully be themselves — where young people who are Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, LGBTQ+, or living with a disability can be fully empowered, loved, and included. 2022 programming — from the Black Girls (EM)Power Initiative to the Inland Empire Wellness Collaborative to Youth Artists Collective — will be replicated and expanded into the communities where young people live, study and work.