The History of You Can Mentor.
There are hundreds of faith-based mentoring organizations all across the country. Each mentor and mentoring organization has something to offer that can help their fellow mentor advance the kingdom in their own unique way.
Wouldn’t it be helpful if there was a place for all faith-based mentoring organizations to come to grow as mentors? Could we create a network for mentoring leaders to come together to advance mentoring as a whole?
You Can Mentor was founded in 2019 as a way to support mentors and mentoring organizations as they build relationships with kids from hard places in their community. We started as a podcast that equipped mentors with best practices, shined a spotlight on faith-based mentoring organizations, and encouraged mentors with stories of hope. Now, we are a network that provides two things to support mentors: resources and relationships.
Our goal is to:
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Get to know faith-based mentoring organizations who work primarily with kids who have experienced hardships.
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Equip mentors and mentoring organizations with our resources.
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Encourage mentors and mentoring organizations through relationships with other like-minded mentors and with testimonies of the power of mentoring.
Trauma and hardships are messy. Mentoring is hard. Mentoring by yourself is even more challenging. We want to surround you with people who know what mentoring or running a mentoring organization is like. It is not good for us to mentor alone.
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If you are a faith-based mentor or mentoring organization, we’d love to get to know you and help you and your team benefit from our resources. We’re here and believe with all of our hearts that we can accomplish more when we work together.
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Who we are: Zach Garza & John Barnard
Zach Garza is passionate about mentoring because the Lord used a mentor to change his life.
Out of his passion, he founded the Dallas-based Forerunner Mentoring Program in 2011 and grew it into a flourishing organization serving hundreds of families and faithfully stewarding a $1.2M budget.
In 2019, Garza founded "You Can Mentor", a non-profit that helps equip and encourage mentors and mentoring organizations all across the world.
In 2021, Zach teamed up with the East-Texas based Mentoring Alliance to expand their reach and to start a new mentoring programs in public schools in Waco, Texas.
Garza has a gift of vision, strategy, and communication and wants to use those gifts to help other mentors avoid the mistakes he once made as a non-profit entrepreneur. His desire is to see a national mentoring movement through every community in America being supported by a Christian mentoring organization.
John Barnard was born and raised in South Houston, Texas. Shortly after receiving his undergrad from Texas Tech, he began a twenty-year career in ministry which included roles as associate pastor, wosrship pastor, and youth minister in Lubbock, Austin, Houston, and rural Texas. He completed a master's in church leadership in 2012.
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In 2005, John started mentoring skateboarders by building relationships, sharing his faith, and producing and giving away skateboards. Seven years later, he established Middleman Skateboard Ministries as a board-run nonprofit.
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John and his wife Mandi, moved their family to Waco to run Middleman as a full-time mentoring ministry in 2016.
Today, Middleman focuses its efforts on local mentoring and supporting other skate ministries across the country by offering free resources, strategy, counseling, and financial support.
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To find out more about Middleman or to contact John:
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