VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1 ful. There are also no other young children in the family for him to play with, so he often spends time alone in his room. As a former mentor, I recognize the need for children to grow up with strong adult role models. When I was interning as a newspaper reporter in Ghana in the summer of 2008, I had the opportunity to mentor a teenager named Desmond. He was 16 at the time, and he lived in a house in my neighborhood with several other kids after moving out of his parents’ house. He worked from sunup to sundown Monday through Friday selling phone cards on the street. His paycheck at the end of the month? Approximately $20 US. I couldn’t offer him much in the way of money but I did give him friendship. I taught him how to use e-mail; I competed (and lost) against him in impromptu hip hop dance contests at night. Despite having limited resources, Desmond always had a smile on his face and looked forward to learning more in school so that he could one day open an orphanage for children in the Okpongolo neighborhood. Although Jacob and Desmond live worlds apart, their needs for adult role models bring them together. While direct service is no longer my concentration, the assistance I provide for Community Friends makes mentoring matches possible. Currently, the program supports approximately 70 pairs of adults and children. While this number is certainly more than respectable, there are still scores of children in Chittenden County who could benefit from mentoring relationships. While I definitely don’t want to clean up trash that even a skunk found unacceptable again, I am ready for the challenges that the rest of the year will bring. Community Friends needs more exposure. Without more attention, more matches cannot be made. Although Vermont is about to sink into the abyss of winter soon, mentoring is still a hotspot that can brighten the lives of many people. With January being National Mentoring Month, Community Friends looks forward to the hellos and goodbyes that will accompany the changes in the seasons. Mentor on.
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Ken Ward AmeriCorps*VISTA Community Friends Mentoring Burlington, VT
Sadie Allen AmeriCorps*VISTA The Kellogg-Hubbard Library Montpelier, VT
Hello, my name is Sadie Allen and I’m the new AmeriCorps *VISTA at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library. It is my dream to become a librarian. I always fantasized about working in a place filled with books. In my head it was very much like the library the Beast had in his castle in the Disney Film, Beauty and the Beast, with beautiful books reaching the ceiling, amid spiral staircases and oil paintings. Sharing this desire with people has had mixed results. One of the summer league swimmers I coached put it best, “You want to be a librarian... But that’s so boring!” Combine this typical reaction with the fact that I’m an AmeriCorps*VISTA exacerbates people’s reactions. Yes, I am serving at a library and yes I am living at the poverty level to do it. This sort of logic does not settle in the minds of people, who have a narrower definition of what it means to successfully utilize your college education. But what can I say? Love makes people do crazy things.