Did you realize that January is Michigan and National Mentoring Month?
The 2011 theme is “Pass It On.” During January 2011 we celebrate the everyday, ordinary people who are making a difference for kids in Clinton County. Mentors don’t need special skills – all they need to do is care about kids and be willing to volunteer about an hour a week.
What better time then right now to find out about how you can get involved to be a mentor for a local youth and help change their life while changing yours at the same time! Clinton County MSU Extension and Clinton County Juvenile Court are working to find adult and teen mentors for a variety of different mentoring opportunities.
There are opportunities where the mentor and mentee get to pick when and where they meet and other opportunities where matches meet at the same place and time each week. Take some time to learn about what Clinton County Youth Mentoring has to offer and consider how you can get involved. We are looking for people who can commit one to two hours once a week. Mentor opportunities are at different sites around the county.
First, Key Mentoring After-school matches 3rd -6th grade students in the Clinton County area with an adult or teen mentor. It is a fun and educational program that focuses on life skill and academic development, recreation, and community service projects. By providing youth with a mentor, they will be given the opportunity to expand these skills through having a positive role model and someone to support their development. As a result, they will become equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to make positive life choices and become a successful adult.
Another site based option is the Key Mentoring Lunch Buddies which matches middle school students during their lunch hour with an adult mentor. Adults would be committed to spending a lunch hour once a week with a middle school student for the entire school year. During this time mentors will form a relationship with their mentee to help them gain the knowledge and skills to make positive life choices and become a successful adult.
Finally we have one more site-based option through the PASS Mentoring program. In this option, teen mentors under adult supervision will be matched with a 6th through 8th grade student and will meet on Sunday evenings.
If meeting the same time every week or one of our times doesn’t work for you we have two more options where mentors and mentees pick their meeting places and times in our community based programs. First Creating Connections Mentoring provides youth who are involved in foster care or adopted out of foster care with an adult who will spend time with them in a one-on-one mentoring relationship. Second, PASS community-based Mentoring provides court involved youth with an adult who spends quality one-on-one time with them.
As Helen Keller once said, “The unselfish effort to bring cheer to others will be the beginning of a happier life for ourselves.”
So take this opportunity to find out how you can give just a couple hours of your life to bring cheer to lives of others. For information on how you can be involved contact Clinton County MSU Extension office at (989)-224-5240 or attend the Clinton County Youth Mentoring Open House on January 11th from 6:30pm to 8pm at the Clinton County Courthouse.