Meet My Match

I discovered mentoring a decade ago. It started with a precocious second grader that landed me in the principal’s office, was the subject of a number of my college scholarship essays, and made me realize how powerful a little bit of time and attention can mean to a kid. I continued to mentor through college and even took a job with the non-profit organization launched by the idea of peer mentoring. And, now that that precocious second grader is about to graduate from high school, it felt like a good time to give mentoring another go.

A friend told me about iMentor about a year ago. The organization was founded on the idea that by reinventing the mentorship process you can tap into a whole new pool of professional, experienced mentors. They match over 1,000 kids annually with adults from the Manhattan area. Each pair builds their relationship using weekly emails and monthly in-person meet-ups. They have tons of data to show that this method is effective too. The most significant to me is that 77% of the mentees in the program enroll in college. The number is below 50% for the average NYC public school student.

After a CIA-esque approval process that included being interviewed, finger-printed, background-checked, trained, cavity-searched, X-rayed and DNA-swabbed, I’ve finally been matched! We’ll call her K in respect of her privacy. We have our first in-person meet-up this Saturday at her school in the Bronx. I’ll be rushing off for my trip afterward, so I’ll have to tell you all about it next week!