Ruby and Roman each carried a white paper bag overflowing with freshly picked apples and a tooth-splitting smile last Saturday morning as they clambered to sit atop the stone wall in Adirondack Circle.
“I got a bunch of tiny little apple ‘thingies,’” Ruby said, drawing an apple smaller than her nine-year-old palm out of her bag.
Giving Ruby a boost with one hand, her mentor Greer Howard ’16, used the other to save an apple on verge of tumbling onto the sidewalk.
“Roman got bigger ones,” Ruby said as she reached into the batch of apples collected by her brother, who was running circles around a nearby tree trunk.
“I want to make apple pie,” Roman interjected, a honey stick between his teeth, while his mentor, Emily Funsten ’16, attempted to roll up his too-long sleeves before he ran away again.
Ruby and Roman have been coming to the College since last fall through the Community Friends program. The siblings spend two hours every week with their mentors, Howard and Funsten, swimming, making gingerbread houses, doing arts and crafts or playing games.
“They don’t really care so much what they’re doing,” said their mother, Gillian. “It’s just that they have a special someone in their life.”
Such is the aim of Community Friends, a volunteer mentorship organization that has matched over 2,000 College students with six- to 12-year-old children from Addison County since its inception in 1960. Originally run by the Counseling Service of Addison County, the program is one of the oldest service organizations involved with the College. But after budget cuts in 2002, the College took over the program, which has since been run through the Community Engagement office.
Nestor Martinez came to the College last year via an AmeriCorps VISTA grant to run Community Friends. He now works as the Program and Outreach Fellow in the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs.
Last year, Martinez visited eight of 18 elementary schools in Addison County to talk to guidance counselors about introducing children and families to the program. At one such school, Bristol Elementary, the guidance counselor brought Ruby and Roman into the program and from there the organization matched the two with Howard and Funsten.
“I don’t know why we were chosen,” Gillian said of her family’s involvement in the program.
This is nothing out of the ordinary for Community Friends. Mentees are often referred to the program by a guidance counselor, clinician or social worker without parent involvement.
“A lot of times guidance counselors sign kids up if they see problems at home or [if] the kids clearly need extra attention or a positive role model,” Samantha Wasserman ’14, lead student coordinator, said. “They might be acting out in school or they’re a little shy or they have some behavioral issues.”
Martinez added that more of than not, their families lack a role model.
“Especially for boys coming in, it’s usually a lack of a male figure, or at least a positive male figure,” Martinez said.
Parents can also apply on their child’s behalf, though these applications usually focus on activities and interests, rather than behavioral or social issues.
“Sometimes you do get kids from —and I hate to use this word — perfectly adjusted families,” Martinez said, specifying the reason parents sign their children up as a child’s interest the family does not have time to nurture.
Last year, for example, he received an application from a counselor in Bristol advocating a child who spent his weeks with his father and weekends with his mother.
“The father worked so many hours and wasn’t around a lot, and [the child] was really showing an aptitude for music,” Martinez said. “He wanted to find someone who could provide an outlet for music but also had experience working with children and when challenges arose could support him.”
A Perfect Match
No matter how the child becomes involved with Community Friends, the first step coordinators take is to match them with a mentor who has been through a similar application process. Wasserman said the mentor’s application and interview process work not as a critical assessment of the applicant, but instead aims to get to know the soon-to-be mentor find them a suitable mentee match. Rarely are students denied a mentorship position; the obstacle is generally one of logistical or scheduling difficulties.
Matching mentors and mentees depends foremost on transportation availability — coordinators need to make sure that either the mentor or the family has a way to reach the other. With this base covered, the matches are then based on common interests or activities, and the age and gender that the mentor specified in the application.
“It was pretty common practice to match males to males, females to females,” Martinez said. “Sometimes college-aged females with little boys, but never college males with little girls.”
And finally, the personal connection can be fostered. Though their first meeting is in the company of a student coordinator and the mentee’s family, the Community Friends pair is free to make their own fun and establish a unique relationship.
“It’s mostly an individual one-on-one program, which is something that makes it a really special and important relationship between the mentor and the mentee,” Wasserman said.
In addition to weekly pair get-togethers, coordinators also host several program-wide events and optional gatherings for mentors and mentees to get to know others involved in the program. Autumnal crafting parties take place in the fall, and the pairs attend a scavenger hunt-picnic event in the spring, but the paramount event has remained the J Term pool party. Though events like these do not appeal to all the mentees, the pool party usually draws the biggest number of party-goers — about half the pairs show up.
Wasserman has also been working to host more mentor-only events.
“[These events will] create a network between us college students to help each other and discuss the issues we’re facing in our matches,” Wasserman said.
Participation Fluctuation
Student coordinators have managed to bulk up the mentor-training program, which in the past has been insubstantial. The program now features a local speaker who addresses issues students might see in Addison County, a staff member from Community Engagement to discuss the guidelines of the program and small group discussions.
Wasserman said her focus is to increase the support and training for the mentors. Pushing to better educate mentors has proved a two-fold effort — the program first needs to recruit said mentors.
“Participation has waxed and waned over the years, depending on funding and on staffing,” said Tiffany Sargent, director of civic engagement, who has been involved with the program since 1985.
Lack of participation often results from the inability for students to find time in to take on a mentee; the responsibility consists of a two-hour meeting once a week and a minimum commitment of one academic year.
“More often than not, [students] continue [their relationships] beyond a year, but some do cut it off after a year,” Martinez said.
Most of the relationships end because of scheduling conflicts, though some end because the connections between mentor and mentee have not worked well.
Currently, there are about 65 active Community Friends pairs and a handful more pending. Last year’s final count was between 75 and 80 pairs, but Sargent guesses it ould reach 90 this year.
Thirty-seven children from Addison County, however, are still waiting for their mentees.
Clearly, the program is in need of volunteers and, as Wasserman, Sargent, Martinez and Howard all emphasized, the lack of male mentors in particular has posed a consistent problem.
“Females are just more willing to volunteer across the board,” Martinez said. “Perhaps females in general are more willing to be with children than males.”
Discrepancies between male and female participants have followed a common pattern throughout the years. Generally, 75 percent of the mentors are female.
This trend heavily affects the kids’ ability to be matched with a mentor; midway through last year, Martinez remembered, the waitlist was all boys.
The Power of Friendship
To Ruby and Roman, however, these logistics matter little – for them, it is just fun. Roman’s favorite part about spending time with his mentor is that he “always beat[s] Emily at tic-tac-toe. In really tricky ways.” Ruby settled on, “Mostly all of it.”
Though her fourth grade self may not realize it, Ruby’s childhood has been altered because of her involvement with Community Friends.
“Last year, Ruby had an issue, something had gone on with her family,” Howard said. “After I met with her, her mom texted me saying ‘Thank you, I don’t know what she would have done if she didn’t get to see you that day.’”
Connecting with someone of a different age, background and perspective can change the way a child matures. Many parents alluded to a noticeable growth in their children in the 2012-2013 survey, saying their self-assurance and sociability had developed and flourished.
“She was pretty shy when we first started meeting,” Wasserman said of her mentee with whom she has been paired for three years. “She’s much more confident than she used to be.”
Whether this is a direct result of a relationship with a college student, or just a product of growing up is hard to say, but there is no doubt that the relationships nurtured through Community Friends had a lasting effect.
During her time abroad last spring Wasserman exchanged emails and postcards with her mentee, and on her one-day visit to campus this summer, the pair got together.
“We’re very close at this point,” Wasserman said. “She’s something that’s really important to me here at Middlebury.”
Wasserman, Funsten and Howard all noted that they have learned and grown along with their mentees, too.
“Patience is a big part of it,” Howard said. “And being understanding.”
Mentors become indispensable role models for the children they meet, and their company carries much more weight than just catching falling apples or rolling up sleeves.
Though the program is not intended to provide a tutoring service, Martinez recognized the importance of mentors imparting the importance of schoolwork, recalling several mentee applications that requested the child be exposed to good study habits.
“I like them seeing the college environment,” Gillian said. “We live in a small town – Bristol – and a lot of people don’t go to college, so it’s good for them to be on a college campus and learn what a dorm is and all that stuff.”
But the mentor-mentee connection teaches much more than educational lessons. For mentors, the philosophy behind the program emphasizes the opportunity for mentors to burst out of the Middlebury bubble.
“It gets people away from the 18-22 age group,” Funsten said. “It gets them into a different mindset and it’s an outlet from school. It’s also nice to get involved in the community and to have a family that we know and are decently close to in Bristol.”
Understanding the surrounding community remains a goal of the Community Friends program.
“I think it’s really easy to be on campus in this very academic climate and to think of Middlebury College as Middlebury, Vt. and even Addison [County] by extension,” Martinez said. “The reality is that poverty is pretty prevalent and children in poverty are pretty prevalent, and it’s more of a challenge here because it’s rural.”
Though they might not realize it, mentors are often deeply affected by the people and places they encounter. When asked in their applications why they want to get involved in the program, most students cite their desire to work with children or recall their own experiences with mentors.
But Martinez pointed out that he would hear a lot of students say, “I didn’t think of the kind of life this kid is leading here as a normal scene.” He recalled a conversation with one mentor just after she met her mentee.
“She came to me and said ‘We visited them at home because the family didn’t have a car, and the house really smelled of smoke and [the mentee] smelled of smoke and I didn’t know what to do,’” Martinez said. “I think that was a shock for her, and that’s just part of each of their lifestyles.”
Though many applicants have experience working with children, most of these come through camp or school, which don’t involve behavioral therapy or intervention, said Martinez.
For both mentors and mentees, the program opens doors, teaches lessons and provides a meaningful connection that would not otherwise be made. While raising money or packaging food can greatly benefit people in need, mentors believe having a personal connection with someone creates an entirely new dimension.
“There’s a direct impact you have on these kids’ lives,” said Howard after Ruby had hugged her goodbye and gotten in the car with Roman and Gillian.
Life Changing Bonds in Community
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