BURLINGTON — The nonprofit MENTOR Vermont has given thousands of dollars in grants to schools in the Bristol area to help local students learn and grow.
MENTOR Vermont, formerly known as Mobius, last month announced that it had awarded 29 grants, totaling $310,300 to support adult-to-youth mentoring programs throughout the state. This funding will support more than 100 new and existing program sites, and nearly 1,800 adult-to-youth mentor pairs in communities across Vermont.
The organization awarded four grants to agencies and schools in northeastern Addison County: a $4,300 grant to Lincoln Mentors, a $4,200 grant to Monkton Mentors, a $2,500 grant to the Mt. Abraham Mentoring Program, and an $8,400 grant to the Starksboro Mentoring Program. Locally, it also made a $4,000 grant to the Safer Society Foundation of Brandon to support the New Circle mentoring program.
“Mt. Abe Mentors thanks MENTOR Vermont for contributing to the sustainability and awareness of mentoring at Mt. Abraham middle and high school,” said Brenda McKean, coordinator of the Mt. Abraham Mentoring Program. “The grant money will be used to offer mentors and their mentees experiences outside the school community, support matches based on best practices, and create a culture of mentoring in the community.”
MENTOR Vermont also awarded grants to two statewide agencies that coordinate programs in Addison County: a $45,300 grant to Everybody Wins! Vermont, which runs literacy-based mentoring programs at Bridport Central School, Mary Hogan Elementary, and Salisbury Community School; and a $23,000 grant to The DREAM Program, which pairs students from Middlebury College as mentors for youth living in the Peter Coe and Pine Meadow affordable housing communities.
The Vermont Mentoring Grants are made possible each year through funding support from the A.D. Henderson Foundation, the Vermont Department for Children and Families, and the Permanent Fund for Vermont’s Children. The 2018-2019 grants will provide continuing support for established programs that demonstrate they meet best practices and help plan and launch new programs in underserved regions of the state.
All 2018-2019 grantees have committed to being partners in the Vermont K-12 Mentoring Initiative, a multi-year project, spearheaded by MENTOR Vermont, to establish the statewide program infrastructure needed to allow youth the opportunity to be matched with a mentor from elementary school until they successfully enter adulthood.
Additionally, grantees beyond their first two years of operation are required to demonstrate that they are meeting best practices through the Quality Mentoring System (a program assessment system developed by MENTOR Vermont and MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership). Grantees will also continue to use common questions from the Vermont Mentoring Surveys to survey their mentors and mentees, and track youth outcome data in the following key areas: resiliency; pro-social skills; future aspirations; connectedness to community; and program satisfaction.