Missions Minute - Akron Youth Mentorship (August 21, 2025)

Every family, group, or organization has two choices when faced with challenges – pull together in unity or push apart in fear. In the face of serious challenges, 2025 has been an amazing year of unity in the leadership of Akron Youth Mentorship, building up AYM for the sake of His kingdom and our students. Our small organization operated without an Executive Director for the first half of the year. But God is good. Our board of directors stepped up to fill in the gaps and find an excellent new Executive Director for AYM. Rev. Leshaunte Edwards took over as Executive Director in June, and we are excited to see how his experience, passion, and focus on the mission will take AYM to new levels. Reverend Leshaunte Edwards has over a decade of experience in counseling, education, and ministry, including pastoral roles, and was an all-American track athlete at the University of Akron.

Amidst all the changes, our mission remains the same, which is to mentor youth with biblical teaching to make life's eternal, emotional, educational, and occupational decisions. We do that through large & small group mentoring, which can grow into one-on-one relationships that are deeply transformative. We also provide educational and occupational support to enable students to follow through on the goals they set.

There are lots of ways you can support Akron Youth Mentorship. First and foremost, you can pray. Pray that God enables us to finish filling the financial gap we have in 2025, pray for new mentors and other volunteers, pray that our new fall programming, which starts in September, will be effective, and pray that the board and staff are sensitive to God’s direction. Second, you can support us financially. Third, you can provide a meal for one or more of our programming nights, where, if you choose, you can meet our mentors and mentees. Finally, if you are interested in being a mentor, you can observe one night to see for yourself what we do.
 
If the Lord is moving you to partner with AYM in any way, please reach out to their team to connect, by visiting their website at https://www.akronyouthmentorship.org.