From the News Tribune:
New middle-school mentorship program on East Side
As Elliot Stockstad sees it, mentorship programs are one of the best ways to provide positive role models for students. Organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters do a masterful job, he said, at helping elementary and high school students. But middle school students, he said, often don't have the same opportunity.
A new program, Mentor253, hopes to fill that gap – at least on Tacoma's East Side.
Launched by the Northwest Leadership Foundation last fall with the help of a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, program organizers hope to match 150 students at Gault and McIlvaigh middle schools with mentors by the end next year.
So far, 30 students have been matched with mentors. Twenty others – 10 kids and 10 adults – are going through the required background check and should be paired by the start of the school year.
"After that, eventually, I'd like to see every middle school student matched up with someone," said Stockstad, the program's program director. "I realize that's kind of lofty and maybe unrealistic, but that's what I want to do."
But Stockstad, who spent seven years as a counselor and executive director of Sound Youth Counseling, said he hopes to have 90 matches by the end of next month.
A part-time site coordinator oversees the program at each school and sets up activities, like sports or arts and crafts. All activities take place on school grounds.
Organizers are targeting college students and young professionals to be mentors, but the list includes people from myriad backgrounds, like an English teacher at Mount Tahoma High School and a poker dealer at the Emerald Queen Casino.
Stockstad, the program's only full-time employee, also hopes to establish an honorary mentor program, where prominent members of the community who don't have an hour to spare once a week can still lend their name to the cause.
Julia Garnett, the corporate giving manager at Russell Investments, signed up to be a mentor last spring. Her job responsibilities at the investment firm include researching various charitable programs; when she learned about Mentor253, she signed up.
She and her student, a soon-to-be eighth grader at McIlveigh, only met a few times before summer break, but they played tennis and computer games and made collages.
Garnett was also there to just listen and give advice.
"It's a pivotal place where people can invest their energies to make a change," she said. "I've seen programs where kids are provided with a safe place and someone to talk to, and I've seen it make a difference.
"Evidence points to these programs making changes too, but I've seen it myself."
