This past semester has been extremely successful and we are growing! We believe that mentoring works best in community. We do this through our Mentor Collective. We stay in touch with our mentors and mentees through a private group text and host events called "Mentor Moments" to cultivate that community.
We are able to share our experiences, photos, challenges, and celebrate wins together. We encourage each other through responses and with every post, it feels like you are in a community of people that are changing the world together. It is an amazing feeling!
This means that via the financial support of our community, there is a large group of selfless adults discipling at-risk teens together. It allows us to follow up with every match and we have also seen an increase in student’s grades across the board.
Recently, a young man who is now 18 years old came to our LAUNCH Program looking for help. We tried to mentor him back in the early part of 2017 but he wasn't interested in our help at that time, although he did get a chance to experience the reflection of God’s light from our staff. But he knew where to find us.
He showed up to our LAUNCH Program looking for this light. We spent the entire day with him, talked about scripture and created a plan of action for his life. We took him to the adult education building and enrolled him into the GED program. He had to take an entrance exam and we took him out for breakfast and coffee the morning of his test. Over coffee he said "I really needed someone to push me". In addition to getting back into school, we found a great group of people he could volunteer with at a food pantry. Part of his plan of action is to stop by our resource center every Thursday for one hour to be mentored.
Please pray for him. He lives in a fairly rough neighborhood with his disabled mom. And though the odds are against him and this journey will take hard work, because of Christ, generosity of our community, and Deliver Hope, he will not have to take this journey alone.