National Mentoring Month

[Jordan Merlo]

EXPAND YOUR UNIVERSE, MENTOR A CHILDJanuary is National Mentoring Month. It is the time of year when our nation spotlights the importance of mentors and the need for every child to have a caring adult in his or her life. When serving as a mentor you not only enrich the childs life, but your own as well.Places such as Cabrini Connections who are becoming more well-known within its community are seeking more mentors as their student base begins to increase. Cabrini Connections has been around since 1992, there sole purpose is to get people like you in structured activities with youth living in economically and educationally disadvantaged neighborhoods to make a life-changing difference within these youths lives. How do we do that? All these youth need is to feel loved, needed, and worthwhile. With that alone a child simply being acknowledged and congratulated on their accomplishments can go a long way.All we need is a couple hours of your time a week to help provide a nuturing environment for these youth. If you have some free time and are up for the challenge, I encourage you to go out and become a mentor. There are tons of mentoring opportunities. If you are having trouble finding a program go onto this link and from here you can find mentor programs in your area.Good luck.Jordan E. Merlo

[Daniel Bassill]

Thanks Jordan. We hope National Mentoring Month captures the attention of more people who might volunteer with us. However, we're not looking for as many people to do one-on-one (at least at Cabrini Connections) as we are for people to help us support those volunteers.

This graphic illustrates the many different actions that take place at Cabrini Connections each week so that volunteers can connect as tutors/mentors. I wrote more about it here. As people consider ways to help mentoring programs we want them to think of ways they can use their talent and financial resources to help us build the infrastructure needed to support long-term mentoring that leads kids from 7th grade through high school and then through the next six to ten years to a job and career. This list just shows some roles that volunteers can take with us, or similar programs.