The Spartan Friends Mentoring Program received a $10,000 grant from the Best Buy Children’s Foundation this month to continue its work with Lansing middle school students.
Jim McManus, a Best Buy spokesman, said the program received the grant because it embodies the type of program the foundation likes to support.
“(The foundation likes) awarding grants to groups that can develop life skills in young people,” he said. “They really do an excellent job. It’s terrific that our grant is going to be able to help Spartan Friends reach more kids who need to have some leadership and mentoring in their lives.
“It’s really a great match.”
John Tucker, the executive director of the Youth Development Corporation, which runs the program, said money and support is always needed.
“If you don’t get the grants to do the program, you can’t service many kids,” Tucker said.
The mentoring program, in its eighth year, helps students aged 10 to 15 who are having attendance and grade problems in school, Tucker said.
“We get mentors who are adults and we train them,” he said. “We match them one-on-one with a middle school student who is not doing well. (The mentors spend) two hours of tutoring with them and two hours of doing something fun, with the goal in mind of changing their performance in school because they have another person involved in their life that adds something that wasn’t there before.”
Tucker said the program had one student last year who had been in five elementary schools and was not doing well in middle school. After being paired with a mentor, the student’s grade-point average went from 1.8 to 3.7 and her behavior improved dramatically.
“Somebody got her motivated,” he said. “They tapped that resource and she continues to do well.”
John Jackson, the coordinator of the mentoring program, said every child needs a mentor, especially those who lack role models at home.
“Kids who grew up into decent, intelligent adults all had mentors, role models in their neighborhood,” Jackson said. “What we’re trying to do is somewhat artificially re-establish what happens naturally. We know it works, and it’s the only thing that we really know does work.”
The program has volunteers from MSU, Lansing Community College and the surrounding community, but the grant money will help keep the program as successful as it has been, Jackson said.
“That’s part of the problem with youth development programs. There isn’t enough money so that grant certainly will help us to do more to help children academically and socially,” Jackson said.
And Otto Middle School counselor Carol Scyoc said the program definitely works.
“It’s a fantastic program,” she said. “(Jackson) really matches the mentors according to gender and by ethnicity. He has the kids then fill out things that they like to do. He tries to match that (and have) somebody who can identify with the child. Then he follows up on them, sees how things are going. That’s why it’s such a fantastic program.
“I’ve watched my children, just watched them blossom.”
