Characteristics of identified natural mentors in the experiences and perceptions of early-and-middle-aged adolescent youth: Implications for formal youth mentoring practice

Natural mentoring is a type of youth-adult relationship distinguished with the supportive and caring qualities. The complex conceptual definition as well as the youth-centred knowledge on this type of relationship in youths’ daily experiences are missing in the literature. This empirical article reports the analysis of data subset exploring the experiences of youths in natural mentoring relationships in the Czech context. Overall, 533 young people (aged 11–16, mean age 13.4) in eight secondary schools in the Czech Republic participated in the qualitative open-ended questionnaire, identifying, and describing natural mentors from their social networks. The paper reports results of thematic analysis of selected questionnaire items on young people’s experiences and perceptions of their identified natural mentors. Young people identified natural mentors most often (n = 105) among their peers or older friends. Besides, youths mentioned and described grandparents, older siblings, family acquaintances, schoolteachers, youth-group and sport leaders, and one-to-one music teachers as natural mentors.Identified mentors were most often perceived as ‘a good person’ with a caring, attentive, empathetic, nice, kind, and friendly nature who, as a result, is perceived as helpful and supportive. Results are discussed with recommendations for further exploration of natural mentoring as a type of youth–adult relationship, naturally occurring in institutions, organisations, and various youth-work settings where youth-adult interactions are part of the service/institution.