Volunteer mentors empower inner-city youths - Southwest Neighborhood Assembly Youth Activities Task Force, Washington, D.C

Children Today, Jan-Feb, 1990 by Patricia Rowe

The amount of time the mentor spends with a youth depends on the youth's adjustment at the workplace. Mentor intervention might be necessary if the young person needs encouragement in bolstering the confidence that will enhance his or her job performance. Mentors are also expected to establish a cooperative relationship with employers, who are urged to contact the mentor for assistance if problems arise on the job.

Weathers strives to match compatible personalities so that the interaction between mentor and intern results in greater responsiveness to the youth's needs. Because a number of boys in the program have been raised in single-parent homes lacking a strong male role model, she attempts, where possible, to pair male interns with competent male mentors. While conceding that the mentor-intern relationship may be undermined in cases where a teen has difficulty relating to adults, Wheathers reports that "the rapport than often develops between mentor and youth--sometimes extending beyond the summer--is especially noteworthy."

Keeping Overhead Low

The program is supported and underwritten by annual Task Force fundraisers; grants from private organizations, foundations, local businesses and corporations; and by individual donations. As its own contribution to operating costs, the Task Force has staged dinner theater events and "sunset supper shows"--with food donated by Safeway Stores, Inc. and prepared and served by volunteers--and hosts annual spring luncheons to which the business community is invited. Harbour Square, a Southwest residential apartment complex that provides job placement for summer interns, also supplies facilities for fundraisers. The Metropolitan Police Boys' and Girls' Club of Southwest Washington furnishes free office space for the Task Force headquarters, and the University of the District of Columbia has been a source of funding as well as job placement.

In addition to financial support and a word processor from the Rotary Foundation, the program has received funds from the Queen Coonley Foundation, the Jesse Ball Dupont Fund, and the Private Industry Council of the District of Columbia, a nonprofit corporation that receives federal and city funding to support job training programs for low-income D.C. residents. Other major contributors to the program include Western Development Corporation, a local developer that has donated grants of $ 15,000 each year for the last five years, as well as the World Bank, Riggs Bank, and The Washington Post.

With the money raised, the Task Force implements its all-volunteer program. Functioning as a form of employment agency, the Task Force finds summer employment for an average 30 to 100 teens each year, devising the most suitable and satisfactory match for both intern and employer, then paying the intern what it terms a "training stipend" that amounts to the minimum wage. Except for the interns, the only paid participant is Mrs. Maude Stephens, an adult coordinator hired to facilitate program operation and ensure smoother administration and better communication among interns, mentors and employers.