My Mentoring Story (A Series by Friends for Youth Staff)

D'Arcy's Story:

I got a degree in Literature from Pitzer College but was drawn to the Arboretum.  I spent five summers in addition to parts of the year in the native gardens there.  In part, it was a way to balance out all the time I spent sitting and reading.  But another major reason was a mentor, professor John Rodman, who was the director of the Arboretum.  He had degrees from Harvard in Political Science and was self-taught in Environmental Studies.  He was not afraid to learn, to try something new, and encouraged me to do the same.  I was never a sporty, athletic type but he put trowels, saws, and pick axes in my hand.  He taught me to use a chipper.  We dug trenches, turned compost, planted, trimmed, and took out non-native plants.  We put in and repaired irrigation.  We worked starting at 6am some days in the summer because by noon it was 105 degrees.—I never drank so much water and sweated it all away!—And I have never learned so much.  Oh, the classes and other professors at Pitzer were great too.  But John was someone who took me out of my box, who taught me that there was more to me than I had known.

My Mentoring Story (A Series by Friends for Youth Staff)

Kristen's Story.

I can credit many great influences on my life, many people who have stood as mentors to me. I am very blessed to have had a loving and supportive home in which my parents looked after my well being and did their best to guide and direct me. I have had a few great teachers in my many years in school that have undoubtedly influenced my very perception of reality and thus provided some mentorship, with or without their full knowledge of the impact they have had on me. To narrow this entry to outline just one is truly a challenge for me, but in my effort to keep on topic, I’ll speak of a mentor who very specifically saw something in me worth fostering and continues to be my confidant, teacher, and dear friend.

I came to know Mrs. Jeri Fujimoto through my work at the City of San Carlos; or rather, she came to know me first in hiring me. I was working at a local salon, recent graduate from the community college’s Cosmetology program, and freshly licensed for fabulousness. As it turns out, being trained to become a master colorist (aka mixing color for NYC industry legends and sweeping hair up) doesn’t pay all that well, especially in the face of paying off school loans. I was looking for a supplemental income, a part time job close to home and other work. A friend recommended a position as a recreation leader at what I would come to call my second home, the San Carlos Youth Center. Working with youth came natural to me; I was raised in a home that was also a day care, ran by my mother.

My & Jeri’s relationship was one typical of subordinate and superior at first; moreover, I feared her. She would not accept less than 100% and was quick to tell you when you were slacking. This management quality coupled with a sense that this lady put up with no one’s crap kept me at arm’s length to her and preferably on her “good side.” It didn’t take long to know that this lady was in the business of improving the lives of youth, but wasn’t for years till I came to have a full appreciation for who this lady is and what her primarily goal with her staff was.

What makes Jeri an amazing mentor was first what makes her an amazing leader; her vision. She imagined a safe and well maintained place for all youth to come and grow in. She led the pack on incorporating the 41 Developmental Assets into her programming and all other elements of Youth Development she had her hands on (lots too!). Furthermore, she saw her staff and youth commissioners as the ambassadors and future leaders of this vision and movement. Jeri made it her priority to not only set the standards in her field but to also ensure that through working under her, she fostered the skill and urgency for her work to continue past her time. It became clear to me that she was interested in all Youth Development, and wanted this to reach legislature as an urgent and important topic.

Now the more personal side of things… I worked under Jeri and her cohorts in every youth avenue at the City for more than eight years, four moves, three family deaths and one parent’s move out of state. She acted as a second mother to me in my scholastic, personal, health and romantic crises. She encouraged my experience in different programs and I realize now that she was helping me identify my own niche. She saw my desire and passion for helping misguided and underserved youth and she fueled my drive to find a place where I could make a difference for youth in my community ((Friends for Youth!!)).

I realize now more clearly than ever that every time Jeri made me “do it over again” it was because she knew that I could do, be better. Every time she pushed me improve a program, reexamine a budget, or made me explain “why?” I proposed to execute a plan, she did it for my own clarity, skill building and sense of accomplishment. I had never been so proud of my own accomplishments before I worked under her. She made me deserve the credit, own every project and make it undeniably purposeful.

Jeri is my personal and professional mentor. I still check-in with her about major life choices and opportunities. She took the time to get to know me, identify my needs, skills and talents and provide me with the opportunity to improve not only my career path, but myself as a whole. She is the first to sense when I am overwhelmed, and the only person that can speak reason to me at times. She knows my weaknesses and she has always provided me the space to make mistakes, and then help to fix them through guidance and advice. Jeri is my mentor not only because she is a revered and accomplished professional, but because she knows that the only way to make positive change happen is to elicit change in all contributing parties. She made me feel proud and important to the organization I served working three or forty hours a week because she made me understand how crucial the impact of just one person can be on another.

Grantwriting Do's and Don'ts

In August, I was fortunate to be asked to review proposals for one of the recent federal mentoring grant requests. I found out on a Wednesday that Becky Cooper, our Executive Director, couldn't make it, so after confirming on Thursday, getting my tickets on Friday, and arriving Saturday night, I was in Washington, D.C., ready for six days of reading, thinking, and writing!

This was my first experience as a reviewer for any grant process and I feel very fortunate to have been asked to attend. My overall impression is that as difficult as it seems on the grant-writer side, it is equally as complicated on the grant-creator and grant-reviewer sides. I approached the work with few expectations, though found the time involved in reviewing eight 90-page proposals a lot of work. Assessing each proposal also was complex for me, as I have specific knowledge of mentoring programming that wasn't applicable for reviewing and assessing the proposals. For example, a proposal that assures the federal government 200 mentors would be recruited, screened, trained and matched within six weeks is probably unrealistic (this is an exaggeration, not from an actual proposal - but not by much), but that kind of timeline and outcome was not a consideration for any of the criteria.

From this experience, here's my quick list of Dos and Don'ts when it comes to responding to any RFPs:

Do

• Address all the criteria requested
• Carefully read criteria requested
• Make a case for your program or project
• Show how experienced and qualified your staff really is
• Explain in simple terms how your program or project fits the criteria
• Follow guidelines for formatting
• Use local statistics as much as possible

Don't

• Include extraneous information - save your space for what's needed!
• Misinterpret criteria requested - see above
• Assume the reviewers know your community or agency
• Plan to hire your family members with this funding
• Try to make your program or project fit if it really doesn't
• Abuse the guidelines for formatting - irritated reviewers who can't read 6-point font on the budget sheets are not what you want!
• Try to allude to national statistics to make the case for your community

I walked away with a more thorough understanding of the federal grants process and a deep appreciation for great grant writers! Be sure to give your grant writer an extra smile or piece of chocolate for all of the hard work involved in his or her job. And good luck with your proposal writing!

My Mentoring Story (A Series by Friends for Youth Staff)

Jonathan's Story.

Ken was my friend Kyle’s father. He took me and Kyle to practice basketball at a church gym on weekend nights. There he taught me to keep my wrist extended after my shot, to always be down the court first, and to only give up on the ball when it had made it through the net. He had a very calibrated way of speaking that kept you rapt with attentiveness. “Jonathan,” he’d say with a long breath, “you look like a chicken with your elbow out like that. Keep it straight. Follow through.”

At Kyle’s house we played a lot of board games. Ken would sometimes play with us. We played chess, Stratego, Risk, checkers and Monopoly. As with basketball, his lesson around these games was to follow through. If you made a move in chess, it wasn’t for an instant payoff. Rather, it was part of a larger plan that you were trying to execute.

Ken was my mentor for many years and I never realized it. He was the father of my friend, my basketball coach, an intellectual pontificator and a strategic consultant. He was a lawyer, a former football player and he hailed from the South side of Chicago. But what I remember most is that he taught me to follow through.