How Sarah Schaefer Is Making Mentoring a Statewide Movement in Minnesota
When Sarah Schaefer talks about mentoring, she isn’t speaking in theory.
She’s describing her life.
Today, Sarah serves as Executive Director of Mentor Minnesota, supporting around 200 mentoring programs that collectively reach an estimated 130,000 young people across the state. But her commitment to this work started long before the job title — in a rural town in Maine, a library across the street, and two adults who noticed her.
“Mentoring is truly my entire life story.”
This conversation with host DamienHoward on Village Talks (powered by SELvie) is less about programs and more about people: the librarians, teachers, peers, mentors, and neighbors who showed Sarah what a village can do for a young person — and what a coordinated mentoring field can do for a whole state.
The librarians who saw her: Anne, Judith, and a rural Maine childhood
Sarah grew up in what she describes as “really rural Maine,” in a home that “wasn’t always the most healthy.” What steadied her wasn’t a formal intervention. It was a library.
She lived across the street and, by her own account, basically lived there whenever she wasn’t at school or running in the woods.
Anne and Judith, the librarians, became the first adults who invested in her mind.
They didn’t just hand her books. They learned her.
They “brought me new ideas and new thoughts and new books, things that they thought I might be interested in.” They noticed her intellectual curiosity and fed it. Over time, they came to know her “better than almost any other person on the planet” during her childhood.
In Sarah’s story, they weren’t called mentors. They were “the librarians.” But practically, they modeled what a high-quality mentoring relationship looks like:
– Consistent presence
– Deep knowing
– Intentionally expanding a young person’s world
For youth-development leaders, it’s a reminder that mentoring doesn’t always start with a program. It often starts with adults in everyday roles choosing to show up differently.
Peer support before it had a name
Formal mentors mattered, but so did peers.
In high school, Sarah had a trusted music teacher, Mr. Whitener. She also had something just as powerful: a tight-knit group of friends who are still in constant contact today.
Their group chat has a title that feels almost prophetic: “It Takes a Village.”
They didn’t label it “peer mentoring” at the time. They were simply “a really core group of people who’ve really learned to support each other as we grow.”
That early experience shaped how Sarah now thinks about the field:
– Mentoring isn’t only adult-to-youth.
– Peers can provide accountability, perspective, and shared problem-solving.
– Long-term peer networks can anchor people across major life transitions.
Damienconnected this to his own story as a peer mediator in high school. In his school, students like him could offer an alternative path to suspension — helping classmates move toward “restoration, healing, re-acclimation into the environment.”
Those stories underline a key insight: when young people are given real responsibility to support one another, they don’t just receive mentoring; they practice it.
Discovering identity, community, and the science of mentoring
In college, Sarah’s understanding of relationships deepened again.
She went in already knowing she wanted to “focus on relationships.” During those years, she also realized she was gay and began to build queer community and find queer mentors.
That process — finding people who shared her identity, who understood her experiences — “really solidified the importance of community, strong community.”
Sarah trained as an educator, specializing in special education, and taught in Washington, D.C. Teaching gave her a front-row seat to how relationships shape learning and behavior — and how fragile that support can be when systems are under strain.
Then she did something most people only daydream about: she took a sabbatical and canoed the Mississippi River.
That adventure led her to Minnesota and to a broader realization:
Mentoring and community development are not just about relationships. They’re also about how we connect with our environment and create healthy environments for young people.
From there, under the guidance of her mentor, Daryl Thompson of Boulder Options, Sarah began to dig into the science of mentoring — not just the stories.
Daryl didn’t just encourage her passion; he pushed her to learn the research, understand what makes mentoring effective, and eventually step into statewide leadership with Mentor Minnesota.
What mentoring professionals are actually doing — and why they stay
One of the most striking parts of Sarah’s perspective is how she talks about the people who run mentoring programs.
Through a recent Movement Makers survey of mentoring professionals, she and her colleagues learned:
– Many staff in the mentoring field are highly educated; “the average person has a master’s degree.”
– Most are not here because it pays the most; they’re motivated by meaning and often by their own experiences of being mentored.
– They are designing supports for youth who often have the least access to resources: young people in juvenile justice systems, foster care, or with underrepresented identities.
Yet, despite the importance of their work, it can feel lonely.
Sarah describes what it’s like when mentoring programs meet with Mentor Minnesota staff:
“So much of it feels like mentoring therapy or like an opportunity for people to unburden themselves.”
Programs may be “doing the best it’s ever been” and still feel scared, unsure, or isolated. Sometimes what they need most is exactly what they provide to youth: someone to listen, normalize their experience, and connect them to resources.
This is where Sarah sees Mentor Minnesota’s role clearly:
– Holding space for program leaders to be honest about challenges.
– Cheering them on while sharing concrete tools.
– Pushing against the scarcity mindset that often dominates nonprofit spaces.
In her words, “mentoring is like the opposite of that. It is the more we’re together, the better we are.”
Innovation rooted in community: QueerSpace, Autism Mentorship, and more
The Twin Cities have “gone through the fire” in recent years, as Sarah puts it — literally and figuratively. Yet she sees something powerful emerging from that hardship.
She now knows all her neighbors by name. She knows their kids. And she says that’s increasingly true across the Twin Cities: people are choosing to lean into community rather than pull away.
That shift shows up in the mentoring field too.
Sarah highlighted two examples of programs Mentor Minnesota has supported:
1. QueerSpace
A mentoring program “for and by queer people” that matches queer youth with queer adults.
In a developmental stage when many young people are exploring identity, especially sexual and gender identity, having a mentor who shares that experience can be deeply protective. It offers both practical guidance and a sense of safety and belonging.
2. Autism Mentorship Program
A program that matches autistic youth with autistic adults.
This model recognizes that shared lived experience matters. Autistic adults can help youth navigate environments that weren’t built with them in mind, offering strategies, validation, and hope.
These programs are not one-offs; they reflect a broader environment where, as Sarah says, “there’s a lot of room for innovation” and people “want to get in on community.”
Being “small but mighty,” Mentor Minnesota focuses on connecting these efforts, amplifying their learning, and making sure more young people can benefit.
A magic wand vision: young people who feel seen, known, and joyful
When Damienhanded Sarah a “magic wand” and asked how she’d use it for Minnesota’s young people, she didn’t hesitate.
She wants every young person “to really feel like they are seen and known by someone else in their community.”
That means:
– Someone knows their name.
– Someone notices how they’re doing.
– Someone is available to talk about the hard things.
Her vision isn’t abstract. She imagines simple, daily interactions:
– Saying hi when you pass someone on the street.
– Greeting your neighbor at the park.
– Feeling safe enough to engage because you “feel known.”
For Sarah, the outcome isn’t just safety or resilience — it’s joy.
“It’s really about creating connection so that our young people have access to that unlimited joy that I know that they deserve.”
Damienresonated with this deeply, sharing how he now chooses a gym where people acknowledge him by name over one where he can remain anonymous. That small difference changed where he wants to show up.
He compared it to his childhood on the South Side of Chicago, where even in a resource-poor environment, there was a strong sense of community: “At the very least you’re going to acknowledge people when you pass them on the street.”
Somewhere along the way, that habit faded in many places. Sarah’s “magic wand” is simply to bring it back — and extend that neighborly acknowledgment to the young people in our communities.
Mental health and mentoring: equipping youth and adults together
As the conversation turned toward mental health, Sarah named something many leaders are seeing: “our young people are struggling.”
Identity development and mental health are deeply intertwined. For young people exploring who they are — in terms of gender, sexuality, culture, or any other dimension — the stakes can be high.
Mentor Minnesota has responded with a specific initiative: Mental Health Ambassadors.
This program equips young people and their mentors with:
– Suicide prevention training
– Mental Health First Aid
– Advocacy tools to complete a mental health-related project in their community
Sarah’s point for leaders is practical:
– Normalizing mental health conversations is not optional; it’s essential.
– Adults need to “step up and support” youth in having these conversations.
She urges organizations and individuals to:
1. Identify what mental health resources already exist in their community.
2. Consider how they can be advocates, partners, or connectors.
The work of mentoring, in her view, must now include mental health awareness as a standard, not an add-on.
Is mentoring responsible for filling system gaps?
Near the end, Damienraised a hard question.
With public systems like Chicago Public Schools facing layoffs, larger class sizes, and shrinking resources, is it fair — or even healthy — to expect the mentoring field to “fill the gaps”?
Sarah’s response was clear: mentoring does have a responsibility to step into this conversation.
Mentor Minnesota’s mission explicitly includes supporting young people in school. School, she notes, is “such a huge part of a young person’s development,” and the environment there must support all youth.
While she recognizes the risk of overburdening already stretched programs, she sees several roles mentoring organizations can play:
– Partnering with schools to provide additional caring adults.
– Offering consistent relationships where systems are forced to rotate staff.
– Creating continuity for youth when institutional supports are unstable.
The key is to engage without pretending mentoring can or should replace fully funded, equitable public systems. Instead, mentoring can:
– Provide relational infrastructure around those systems.
– Advocate alongside families and educators for better conditions.
For nonprofit and youth-development leaders, that raises practical questions:
– Where are young people in our community most at risk of being unseen in larger systems?
– How can our mentoring efforts be intentionally aligned with schools, not operating in isolation?
How you can act on Sarah’s insights
Sarah closed the conversation with two specific invitations.
1. Engage with mental health in your context
She encourages organizations and individuals to:
– Learn what mental health supports already exist locally.
– Normalize conversation about mental health with young people.
– Consider how their programs can integrate basic suicide prevention and Mental Health First Aid.
Even if you never launch a formal initiative, you can:
– Train staff and volunteers in basic mental health awareness.
– Establish clear referral pathways for youth who need more support.
– Name mental health explicitly in your program’s goals and language.
2. Be a mentor — in formal and informal ways
For Sarah, being a mentor can start as simply as “saying hi to your neighbor” and getting to know the kids and families in your area.
If you’re ready for something more structured, she recommends using the national Mentoring Connector (via mentoring.org) or Mentor Minnesota’s own directory (mentormn.org) to:
– Search by zip code
– Find programs already doing strong work locally
– Plug into their existing infrastructure
Her reminder: “You’ve got incredible people doing incredible work right in your backyard. And so why not connect with them?”
Bringing it back to your organization
If you lead a nonprofit, school, or youth-development effort, Sarah’s journey offers several questions worth taking to your next team meeting:
– Who are the “Anne and Judith” figures in our context — adults in ordinary roles who could be powerful mentors with minimal additional support?
– How are we supporting the mentors and staff themselves, so they don’t feel isolated in this work?
– Where can we partner with identity-specific programs (like QueerSpace or Autism Mentorship) rather than trying to build everything in-house?
– How explicitly are we integrating mental health awareness into mentoring relationships?
Sarah’s story is a reminder that mentoring isn’t a side project. It’s a backbone for how communities help young people thrive — in school, at home, and in every in-between space.
If you’re curious how organizations are using tools like SELvie to coordinate and scale this kind of mentoring work, you can learn more at https://www.sel-plus.com/selvieai.