Restoring Community Through Mentorship and Collaboration

Our communities are falling apart as communities. You get enough communities falling apart, you've impacted the whole nation. Every community has churches. Every community has schools. Every community has families. If you could connect the church, school, and family, well, you've touched the whole nation, but you've touched it on a localized level where people are closest to the need, where the volunteers are there amidst the need, where there's a moral frame of reference to address the need, and the beauty of this program is that it's owned locally. [00:02:51]

The answer is not in new buildings or new projects but it's really us as a community, us as people, taking our part and doing our part, and to me, where it starts is with our churches. We have needs with regard to social/emotional needs, having an adult figure in a child's life. We have a lot of latchkey students, so after-school programs is very important. Not only must we deal with the issue that kids face while they're in school, we also must be prepared to deal with the kids the students face when they're outside of school, and in that respect we need help and we need partners. [00:42:39]

The National Church Adopt a School Initiative is a national plan to transform communities throughout our country by getting churches to adopt public schools and provide mentoring while supporting their family structure to become strong and stable. [00:76:68]

When I was about 15 years old, I got pregnant with my son, Joseph, and at that same time my father had just passed. I was fighting everybody. I had so much anger. I was fighting and I was in and out of alternative school. Over several weeks, she started to trust and start telling me a little bit about her past, and that's where I first learned that she didn't have either of her parents for support. They were so helpful. They talked to me about my baby already having a heartbeat. [00:97:32]

I was able to help her realize how good of a leader she was and, in turn, show her where that's going to help her be a better parent. In most cases, in a lot of cases with dropouts, there are very few adult models who engage with students on a regular basis. Growing up, I was raised in a single-parent home. My father was never in my life, and my mom had to work a lot. I was smiling on the outside and doing well in sports, but I was still empty and I didn't know just what to do with myself. [00:129:00]

With the partnership that's been created, we've been able to recruit mentors into our buildings. She was struggling with some things from her past as a young girl, and you know, I told her it's not about so much letting go; it's about healing. My relationship with the Lord has just developed, and I just believe that was the most important thing, and I really believe the mentoring program was purposed for that. The Margaret that I know now, there's night and day difference. [00:163:26]

Not only are we having adult mentors coming into our building, we're actually building leadership and building mentors from within our campus. I've led several Bible studies I've done for high schools. They wanted to know about God. They wanted to grow, and I just thought it was great. At Lancaster High School, we had the High School Heroes Program where seniors learned leadership traits in order to pass on to our underclassmen in the hope that they'll model our behavior. [00:192:13]

I believe it's important for a young adult to have a mentor in their life because not everyone has someone they can follow in the steps of. You don't have to be a statistic. You don't have to go along with what the world is saying about teen moms. You can go on and you can finish high school, you can go to college, you can become successful. Instead of adults talking about it and judging the kids on it, we have to open up some kind of communication channel to see where they're coming from, where their thought process is coming from. [00:224:65]

When you look at the family breakdown issues, when you look at poverty, when you look at negative influences coming into their lives, it can look pretty bleak. But hope is a very powerful thing when people see it recognize it and receive it. [00:255:22]