Mentors 'making a difference' with youths.

mentor /mentawr/ — n. an experienced and trusted advisor
—Oxford Pocket American Dictionary

Phil Hamburg meets twice a month with 30 to 35 adolescent boys throughout the county to serve as a positive role model in their lives.

Leland School students who work with adult volunteers once a week through a "bridge connection" program include (from left) Chelsea Belanger, Ashley Nowak, Surbhi Punhani, mentor Jennifer Carson, Andrea Nedow, Ashley Couturier, Katie Staudacher, and Kristine Hansen.

He is one of dozens of people — students and adults alike —participating in numerous mentoring programs on the Leelanau peninsula. Some focus on students, others adults. But all have the same goal: enriching the lives of others.

“We do everything from schoolyard Frisbee golf to having different speakers come in and talk,” Hamburg said of his “guys group,” which involves young males at Suttons Bay, Northport, Leland and Glen Lake schools. “It’s similar to Voices & Choices (for girls). That program’s been effective, so we thought it would be a good idea to do something like this on the boys’ side.”

Funded through liquor control money in coordination with Third Level Crisis Center, Hamburg is at the center of the outreach program and serves as a role model for the young men. Participants are referred to the program by school counselors who believe they may benefit from the relationship. Hamburg arranges for speakers, such as county resident and 9 & 10 News meteorologist Dave Barrons, to talk about topics and share information.

“My goal is to give them a broader range of exposure to things that might benefit them,” he said.

School year programs have focused on cooking (baking cheesecake) and carpentry. Summer activities included canoeing, biking, kayaking, skateboarding and Frisbee golf. Sometimes, they just hang out and eat lunch.

“It’s not just being a mentor. It’s logical to say mentoring happens,” he said. “But it’s more finding other male role models.”

A new group, the Leelanau County Mentoring Coalition, has formed to help support and facilitate the activities on the peninsula.

On the other end of the county, Janis Duwe coordinates efforts by members of the Glen Lake Community Reformed Church who are serving as mentors to nine students at Glen Lake School through Kids Hope USA, a national program based in Zeeland, Mich. The program’s mission is to build caring relationships between students and trained adult mentors.

“Each adult is paired with just one student,” Duwe said of the program, which is in its first year in the county. “The idea is to start early on in their education and go all the way up through the elementary grades.”

She and the other volunteers meet once a week for one hour with their students.

“At first, the kids are shy. They’re not quite sure what’s going on,” Duwe said, adding that the students count on their mentor being there at the same time each week. “But after a while they say, ‘Gee, I could do this for two hours.’”

Sometimes, she meets with her student in the school library. Other times they’ll go to the superintendent’s lobby and throw a football around.

“Academics is part of it, but it’s more just being there for them,” she said.

Although the program is coordinated through a church, volunteers adhere strictly to “separation of church and state.”

“There’s no proselytizing. We respect that it’s a state school,” Duwe explained. “For adults, it’s a sense of giving back. Giving time to a child. A sense of giving back … making a difference.”

Adult volunteers from the Leland community can be seen once at week at Leland Public School meeting with students in a “bridge” program, which grew from another mentoring program called YouthFriends.

Betty Elliott and Nancy Miller, volunteers in the YouthFriends program, decided the keep their mentoring program going after funding for YouthFriends was cut from the United Way budget two years ago.

The women work with school counselor Heather Lowe to identify students who would benefit from a little extra attention. After a thorough background check, volunteers are paired with students (with parental permission) with whom they begin meeting once a week. Elliott spends about 20 minutes with her students over lunch, sometimes helping with school work ,or just playing a game.

Good things have come from these alliances, she said.

“Just the time and the attention … one-on-one time with a non-critical adult is beneficial,” Elliott said.

In one case, a student was struggling with school work. Concerned that the mentor would be seen as just another adult harping on home, it was suggested that the adult volunteer develop the more social aspects of the relationship.

“Pretty soon, the school work came around,” she said.

Leland Superintendent Mike Hartigan supported the continuance of the mentor program when agency funding was discontinued.

“We’ve had a positive result from the mentors coming into the building,” he said, adding that not all participating students are those considered “at risk.”

“We’ve seen improvement over time in those kids who did have difficulty,” he said.

Other ongoing mentoring programs in the county include:

• Big Brother/Big Sisters of Northwest Michigan — provides 29 “school-based” mentors for students attending Suttons Bay School.

• Leelanau Christian Neighbors — has two trained mentors to provide leadership and counseling to families in the area of finances, parenting and navigating government agencies;.

• Project HERO — eighty-nine Suttons Bay High School students who’ve pledged to remain drug, alcohol and tobacco free and serve as role models to elementary and middle school students.

• Leelanau Mentoring — high school students from Leland and Glen Lake Schools are matched with students in fourth through sixth grades.

Benefits of high quality mentoring

Experts say students who receive one-on-one mentoring receive many benefits, including:

• Less likely to initiate drug and alcohol use.
• Less likely to hit someone.
• Skipped fewer days of school.
• Felt more competent about their ability to do well in school.
• Received slightly higher grades.
• Reported more positive relationships with friends and parents.

Students who have participated in one-on-one mentoring embedded in a broader academically oriented program also:

• Have improved academic performance.
• Are more likely to participate in college preparatory activities.
• Are more likely to attend college immediately after high school graduation.

Source: Contemporary Issues in Mentoring, published by Public/Private Ventures