Mentor

"*How odd of you two to find it amusing. You know your mentor is your lifeline to the world in these Games. The one who advises you, lines up your sponsors, and dictates the presentation of any gifts. Haymitch can well be the difference between your life and your death!*"
―Effie Trinket defending Haymitch Abernathy while summarizing the job of a mentor**Mentors** were victors of past Hunger Games who trained subsequent tributes from their District. There were no gender restraints; a male victor could train a female tribute and vice versa. However, male victors were slightly more likely to train male tributes and female victors to train female tributes. There could be two male mentors or two female mentors, though usually there was one female and one male for the respective male and female tribute. Due to a number of different factors, a pair of tributes may have just only one mentor. Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark only had one mentor for both the 74th and 75th Hunger Games, Haymitch Abernathy. This was due to him being the only living victor of District 12.

The mentor program was established with the 10th Hunger Games. In later events, the mentors were previous victors of the Games, but in the 10th Hunger Games, they were top-performing students of the Academy.

## Creation

"*For those of you who don't know, I'm Dr. Gaul, the Head Gamemaker, and I will be mentoring your mentorships.*"
―Dr. Volumnia GaulThe mentor program was said to be the idea of Casca Highbottom, the dean of the Academy, who originally created the Hunger Games. In truth, Highbottom abhorred the Hunger Games and the project was in fact the brainchild of Dr. Volumnia Gaul, the head Gamemaker who was the true architect of the Hunger Games. For the 10th Hunger Games, 24 of the top-performing Academy students were invited to be mentors, each paired with a tribute from one of the districts. It was their job to then groom their tribute for the Games, with the idea being that those who did well would receive a monetary prize. In this early stage, there were few specific rules or guidelines for mentors. Dr. Gaul regularly visited the mentors, encouraging them to consider the nature of the Hunger Games and also asking them to brainstorm ways to get people more engaged in the Games, as viewership was low at the time. Ultimately, Dr. Gaul considered the 10th Hunger Games a failure and felt that it was a mistake to involve the students of the Academy, as the fact that several were killed in a bombing of the Capitol Arena presented the Capitol as being far too vulnerable.

The 15th Hunger Games was the first edition to include victors as mentors instead of Academy students. Back then, only nine of the twelve districts had any victors, so six Academy students still mentored some tributes.

## Work

A mentor's primary job was preparing their respective district's selection of tributes for life in the arena. Having first-hand experience of the Games by virtue of being victors themselves, mentors provided invaluable knowledge and tips to their tributes on how to survive against their fellow tributes as well as what to do out in the arena. By developing potential strategies based on their skills (or lack thereof), a mentor could play an important role on the overall survival of their tributes and their chances of victory.

Mentors also helped prepare their tributes for their public interview with Caesar Flickerman, particularly focusing on helping their tributes make themselves look appealing to prospective sponsors. As it was ultimately up to the mentor to help procure these sponsors, they were crucial in this process. Their relative success (or failure) to get sponsors for their tributes depended strongly on how well their tributes impressed or appealed to them. Should a tribute gain a sponsor, mentors held power over the gifts that went into the arena for their tributes and when they were sent in. Escorts aided mentors in finding sponsors for their tributes, which proved to be a difficult task in the outlying districts, so much so that some escorts, like Priscilla Happith, didn't even try.

Mentoring was an emotionally and psychologically damaging job, particularly for mentors that hailed from districts such as 10, 11, or 12, where victory was a rarity. Addictions that mentors could fall into included morphling, alcohol, and tobacco. Fallow O'Leary was addicted to all three of these substances. Mentors became depressed, descended into damaging vices, and could become apathetic to the following year's tributes due to the sheer number of tributes they have mentored in the hopes of victory ultimately dying. Haymitch was a prime example of this, who, prior to the victory of Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark's victory in the 74th Hunger Games, had not mentored a single District 12 victor in the 23 years since he himself became one in the 50th Hunger Games. He became an alcoholic and showed little concern (initially) of the prospects of Katniss or Peeta's victory in the 74th Hunger Games.

Barley Mayes mentioned that it was well known that mentors could physically, sexually, and mentally abuse their tributes and there was nothing they could do about it. While suffering from withdrawal, Sylva Mayleaf physically abused her tribute Lillian Bond in the 60th Hunger Games, lowering her chances of survival.

## Frequency

The vast majority of victors (93.33%) became mentors after winning the Hunger Games. Unless they were an exemption, they always started mentoring before the age of 20, and they could not be a mentor that year if the tribute they were set to mentor was older than them at the time, and they would be replaced by another victor or a student. The 54th Hunger Games were the first Games to not include any Academy student mentors whatsoever. It would typically be the youngest victors who have already started mentoring who would mentor the tributes.

The only known examples of exemptions for mentorship were:

* Death (as in the case of Lucy Gray Baird)
* Imprisonment (as in the case of Barrett. Although Stanley Gleamway was also prevented from mentoring by being imprisoned, he already mentored a few years' worth of tributes before he was arrested.)
* Mental incapability (as in the case of Annie Cresta)
* The abolishment of the Hunger Games before the victor got a chance to mentor (as in the case of Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark)