A college-based program that pairs really useful college students with mentors helps construct group bonds
Maggie DeMaria, a fourth-year pupil from Athens, has utilized her love for her hometown to assist construct a robust group inside the College of Georgia.
DeMaria entered school with a ardour to serve. By way of the Clarke County Mentor Program, she was capable of volunteer with an area nonprofit and lead the corresponding pupil group, Clarke County Mentors at UGA.
The Clarke County Mentor Program is a nonprofit group that recruits, trains and helps about 275 group volunteers to mentor college students within the Clarke County Faculty District. For greater than 30 years, it has been a school-based program that pairs really useful college students with mentors based mostly on pursuits and experiences. About 150 of the overall 275 mentors are UGA college students.
A Clarke Central Excessive Faculty alumna, DeMaria will graduate from UGA this Could with a level in political science. Although she didn’t take part as a mentee, DeMaria got here to UGA accustomed to this system.
“Rising up within the public faculties right here in Clarke County, we interacted with mentors on a weekly foundation,” she stated. “After I bought to UGA, it was on my radar that I actually needed to be a mentor. I believed it was a cool and intentional technique to give again to a college district that I had a extremely constructive expertise with. It’s such a straightforward, easy and joyful means to have the ability to give again.”
DeMaria mentors a sixth grader at Coile Center Faculty, and he or she serves because the president of the Clarke County Mentors at UGA pupil group.
“It’s a easy factor to provide an hour every week and also you’re creating such a significant relationship with the scholar you’ve been paired with,” DeMaria stated.
Within the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, she has labored with friends at UGA and Alison Rosch, govt director of the Clarke County Mentor Program, to assist develop the UGA pupil group.
Maggie DeMaria, left, walks her mentee, sixth grader Khaston Scott, to her class at Coile Center Faculty. (Photograph by Andrew Davis Tucker/UGA)
“Maggie has been an awesome chief to steer the group ahead. She has introduced ardour and enthusiasm to her position with a deal with mentor match assist and recruitment,” Rosch stated. “She is from Athens, and he or she understands the wants of our college students and faculties.”
The Clarke County Mentors at UGA pupil group hosts on-campus conferences the place mentors get collectively, share tales and discuss concerning the methods they join with their mentees.
Whereas the Clarke County Mentor Program offers formal trainings to mentors, the scholar group provides ongoing assist. For instance, the UGA college students will immediate mock questions and discuss how they may tackle frequent issues in age-appropriate methods.
When the UGA mentors know they’ve mentees of comparable ages, the scholar group will assist join them and encourage a “double date,” to attach the mentors and mentees for enjoyable and enriching actions. Mentors additionally attend authorized after-school actions, like athletic occasions, live shows and step reveals, amongst different actions.
“The neat factor about this group is that it helps UGA college students really feel engaged locally and related to 1 one other,” Rosch stated.
Each DeMaria and Rosch consider that the mentoring relationships are mutually useful for the mentors and mentees. Rosch stated the mentees discover the UGA college students’ enthusiasm contagious, and lots of UGA college students inform her that the mentoring visits are the spotlight of their week.
“I actually couldn’t think about my UGA expertise with out mentoring,” DeMaria stated. “I get to spend an hour every week with my mentee and get to provide her my devoted consideration. It’s so a lot enjoyable, and I hope it’s as a lot of a present to her as it’s to me.”
