Newark is expanding a program that encourages city employees to mentor local school children.
Carol Houck, assistant to the City Manager, said city employees are permitted to leave work for a weekly, one-hour mentoring session at Newark-area schools.
Last month, the city, in partnership with the Delaware Mentoring Council, held a "mini-mentoring" program at John R. Downes Elementary School to show city workers the benefits of mentoring, Houck said. Seven city employees went to the school to meet the school's mentoring coordinator and have lunch with some of the students.
"For an hour and a half, our employees that were interested could go sit in on the mentoring, classroom and hear some information about mentoring, and the kids who need it," she said.
The event at Downes was modeled after a similar event the city held in October at Joseph M. McVey Elementary School, which resulted in 16 city employees signing up to become mentors, Houck said.
Heather Bordas, McVey principal, said the students, in kindergarten through fifth grade, have taken to their mentors well.
"They love them," Bordas said. "They look forward to it every week - it's the highlight of their week."
The city's mentoring initiative began three years ago when it was approached by DMC, Houck said. DMC, hosted by the university, is an organization that promotes mentoring throughout the state.
City manager Carl Luft, a mentor himself, was committed to the idea, Houck said.
"He decided he would allow our employees to take this hour off as volunteer time," she said.
Houck, who runs the city's program, said she selected McVey because unlike other schools in the city, it did not already have a mentoring program.
"McVey was starting fresh," Houck said. "They had nothing and they had a new principal who was really gung-ho about working with us."
Last year, the program dissolved when financial woes caused the Christina School District to eliminate funding for the position of mentoring coordinator at the school, she said.
Houck said last fall she realized she needed a way to rejuvenate the program.
"We wanted to try to kick it off with something different and get more people involved," she said.
Carol Anders Riggs, assistant director of DMC, said it is often hard for people to imagine what mentoring is like, and the mini-mentoring session allowed them to experience it without making a commitment.
"We thought if we gave them a taste they would see how easy and fun it is to do," Riggs said. "Once people see how easy it is to do and how excited the kids are to have mentors and how easy it is to make a difference in their day, it just wins them over."
Once employees sign up to become a mentor, they undergo a background check and a four-hour training session before they are matched up with a child, she said.
Bordas said students in need of a mentor are identified by teachers and counselors. Most are struggling either with academics or with a family situation, such as a divorce, she said.
The students must have permission from their parents to take part in the mentoring program, Bordas said.
Houck, who has been mentoring for three years, said once a mentor is matched to a particular child, he or she visits that child once a week during the school year.
She said when she meets with her mentee she tries to mix academic help with social interaction.
"I do a half an hour of lesson and then a half an hour of playing a learning game, writing in a journal and things like that to keep it interesting and so we get a chance to talk about what is going on in his life and my life," Houck said.
She said the program is rewarding for the mentors, not just the students.
"We get to go be in a school, be with kids and feel good about ourselves after we leave," Houck said.
She said she hopes to match interested employees with mentees at Downes within the next few weeks. After that, she hopes the idea will spread to other municipalities around the state.
Houck said she is preparing an information packet to send to other municipalities.
"It would be like a mentoring challenge," she said.
Riggs said that while many businesses and organizations, including the university, have established similar mentoring programs, Newark is the first municipality in the state to do so.
"They're setting an excellent example for the rest of the municipalities in Delaware," she said.
Bordas said McVey currently has 55 mentors from the city of Newark and elsewhere, but still needs more.
"Anyone can volunteer," she said. "They could just call our school or come on in and we can sit down and train them and walk them through it."
Riggs said she encourages students and community members to become mentors.
"There's just nothing like it - you can see you're helping the child," she said. "It takes so little to make a big difference."
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