Mentor Groupin'

MENTOR GROUPS! This is a new thing we've been doing. The goals of creating mentor groups are several. We work with the same group of four for twelve weeks. It provides more one on one time with an educator based off of our needs. Mentor groups also serve as building a stronger community within a small group. Different educators work on different things (for twelve weeks) such as working on a project, hosting an event, and possibly interviewing our neighbors about things from helping homeless people to getting the community involved with Zeum.

I'm in a group with Carlos, Jule, Samantha, Irina, and myself, Paul. We are currently working on an event called "Best Of". The art from Best Of is basically from when visitors come in and make awesome movies... we highly encourage them to fill out a media release from to have their movie showcased.

All four of us have different jobs. Carlos's job is to call different restaurants to ask for food donations for the event we're hosting. But, we all took turns calling because there were four restaurants to call. My job is to fundraise. I am basically looking for potential donors to donate money for us to rent the Zeum Theater. Fund raising is a new thing for me. One thing I've learned from my mentor group about fund raising is to be calm and polite. I had to call Buca Di Beppo for possible food donation and I was calm, polite and nervous. Usually my nervousness take over but this time it didn't. I remember calling a customer to remind them to stop by for your interview , and my friends were next to me and they were cranking out jokes and I accidentally drooled and I stopped talking in a middle of a sentence. But then I told her that there was static problem. Sorry. Samantha's job is the food entertainer as well as keeping and making sure everything is running smoothly. Jule's job is to advertise this event. Together we made flyer's saying we're having a Best Of showcase for Jule to put around Zeum. Irina's job is similar to Samantha's job except she is making sure we're doing what we need to.

One thing I like about mentor groups in general is that we really get to know who we work with and what each other needs are. I think that schools, after school programs and senior outreach programs should all have a mentor group because that is the only way to get to know who you're working with as suppose to working with 30 people at once. And the fact that after twelve weeks we show what we've done is totally awesome. When the first 12 weeks is over we will switch mentor groups and learn more new exciting things. And I will definitely look back at the time I spent with my group and acknowledge what we've successfully done.