•Assess participants’ interests and preferences via interviews or surveys ahead of time and match youth with similar strengths, experiences and interests.
•Mentees reported higher levels of closeness when matched with mentors of the same gender22.
•Pairing students who already know each other may be effective if their prior experiences have been positive6.
•Use a matching process in which a group of mentors and potential mentees interact through activities and discussions, and then decide on matches using your observations and input from the mentors and mentees. After a group interaction such as this, some programs will ask mentees, “which mentor do you remember?” rather than asking which mentor they liked best, to avoid a popularity contest.