Raising Up Our Children Story And Photos By Hannah Lester
J
ordan had a whole afternoon to run around the park, play tag, explore the woods and enjoy time with his two friends Hannah Lemel and Braden Laney. Lemel and Laney are Jordan’s mentors for Project Uplift and once a week they take him, and his cousin Bella, out for fun activities — a visit to the Kreher Preserve and Nature Center, the park, learning to cook or any other fun activities. Project Uplift has been serving Lee County children since 1973, said Kelley Wells, program coordinator for Project Uplift. “Project Uplift is a youth-mentoring program that serves the Lee County children between the ages of 5 through 12,” she said. “… The children that we serve are placed on a waitlist to be chosen by mentors. Our mentors work in teams, so the children chosen get two mentors that visit them weekly. “The purpose, initially, is just to uplift the lives of … the children that we serve and also to prevent their contact with the juvenile
court system and we do that by providing them the positive experience of having a mentor.” Children are referred to the program, often by families who have had children already participate in Project Uplift, Wells said. DHR, the Lee County schools, the Lee County Youth Development Center and East Alabama Health also all refer children to Project Uplift. Project Uplift is actually a program of the Lee County Youth Development Center, though its location is on Auburn University’s campus. Mentors are often pairs of students from Auburn University. That is what Lemel and Laney are. However, mentors do not have to be students, Wells said. “The mentors actually go through a pretty intensive process to even become a mentor so that can take about three to six weeks, depending on how fast the mentors get their stuff done,” she said.
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LIVING TO SERVE
