YSO Academy

Healthy mentoring relationships are one of the most powerful forces for good in a young person's life. And predatory grooming often looks nearly identical — at first.

That's what makes this such a critical topic for every youth-serving organization.

This course teaches you to distinguish between mentoring and grooming by examining what they share and where they diverge. You'll explore the warning signs that a mentoring relationship may have crossed a line — favoritism, isolation, boundary violations, and the ambiguous situations that are hardest to read — and work through a series of hypothetical scenarios that bring the principles to life.

The second half of the course focuses on prevention: practical policies for off-campus contact, physical and emotional isolation, and the structural safeguards that protect children without undermining the genuine benefits of mentorship.

You'll leave with a clearer framework for evaluating relationships in your organization, concrete policies to implement, and the confidence to act when something doesn't feel right.