The Darts organized the first six mentors at First Presbyterian in 2005. Now the project has been adopted by Good Shepherd Lutheran in Sandy, which last week started its second group. The prospective mentors and six youths — in mentoring lingo they're referred to as "friends" — gathered at the Transition to Adult Living offices for a "speed matching" event.

Like the "speed dating" it's modeled after, there were mentors lined up on one side of the table and prospective "friends" on the other, with five minutes to size each other up before a bell rang and the mentors moved down the line to meet another young person. As with speed dating, there was a certain amount of awkwardness as the mentors and friends talked about favorite foods and adventures. At the end of the evening, the mentors and friends listed their three favorite friends/mentors, and, later, case workers from the Transition to Adult Living program engineered the matches.

Each person in each pair must commit to working on the relationship for two years, with at least two phone calls or meetings a month. According to the National Mentoring Center, Dorothy Dart says, "a two-year period is almost mandatory if you're going to make a difference."

As mentors often discover, mentoring isn't an immediate happily-ever-after. Sometimes a young person will continue to make bad choices — do drugs, get pregnant, quit a job. Sometimes he'll pull away from his mentor. "They're dragged down by their past," is the way Lubbers describes it. "It's always there to reclaim them."

"I made weekly phone calls whether she returned my call or not, just letting her know I cared," remembers Victoria Bushong, a mentor with Good Shepherd Lutheran. Bushong's foster "friend" was busy trying to finish high school, had recently had a baby and had lived in five different locations in the previous six months.

But Bushong hung in there, and now the young woman "realizes I'm not just another flaky person in her life." The key, she says, "is to not be judgmental. ... I can relate, because I made bad choices" as a teenager, says Bushong, who is now 40.

Although the Youth Mentor Project could be run by all kinds of organizations — and, in fact, there is one starting up through the juvenile court system in Weber County — churches are a perfect fit, says Pastor Mike Imperiale at First Presbyterian.

"Our motivation comes from the great commandment: to love God and love your neighbor," he says. "That's the purpose of the Church, to help each other do these things."

And this particular project, he says, "is an opportunity to make a significant difference in someone's life."