Committed to mentoring relationships, Silver Lining Mentoring (SLM) empowers youth in foster care through the development of essential life skills. They are dedicated to cultivating an environment where marginalized voices are lifted up and centered in service of dismantling systems of oppression. Listening to the youth has been at the heart of their work to improve their programs offerings as well as the branding of their organization.

In early 2023, Silver Lining Mentoring (SLM) will launch a pilot program supporting youth who are transitioning out of the foster care system. In planning for this new program, they want to listen deeply to the youth who are participating in the pilot, and iterate on the program in response to their feedback. In the past, SLM has had challenges getting youth and mentors to respond to feedback surveys. As a consequence, they are exploring new ways to listen to the youth who are a part of the pilot program, and presented in LabStorm to gather ideas and advice on how they can improve their feedback practices.

  • Collecting feedback without survey fatigue. A shift towards microlearning through short bursts of information could address the short attention span of the youth and facilitate effective feedback response.
  • Integrating real time feedback and progress. Advancements for customer engagement in the private sector were recommended for collecting real time feedback.
  • Incentivizing youth participation. Attendees directed attention to the sender of the survey requests and suggested looking into the established relationship between the mentees and the sender. If the request to fill out the survey came from a direct supervisor who explains the purpose behind the request, it could be perceived as more meaningful than a random evaluator.

Read the full article about feedback for youth opportunity by Fariha Raisa at Feedback Labs.