Program Spotlights: Connecting Champions and The Center
Published
We celebrated Thank Your Mentee Month with two #TMPprogramspotlights: Connecting Champions and The Center at Midland. Read on to learn more about these two amazing local programs!
Connecting Champions
Connecting Champions is a nonprofit organization that asks children and young adults with cancer, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” to find them a mentor that best fits their interests. Between their AYA Program (adolescent & young adults) and Kids Program, they have matched hundreds of children and young adults with mentors in over 50 different professions. Mentors meet with their mentees for an average of 55 minutes on a weekly to monthly basis, to share a deeper look into the career they are passionate about.
The process for those looking for a mentor is simple. Any person with cancer, age 3 to 26, is eligible to get paired with a mentor. The potential mentee or a family member of theirs, will then fill out a form online for either the Kids Program or the AYA Program. From there, someone from Connecting Champions will reach out asking to set up a video call to learn more about the mentee’s interests. After that, the search for the perfect mentor begins.
“In my personal opinion, Connecting Champions saved my life. Without their presence in my life during treatment, I don’t think I would have had the will to keep going. I credit them with being a big part of who I have become as a person.” This quote came from Katie, a teen involved in the AYA Program. Becoming a mentor for Connecting Champions will help teens like Katie to keep fighting, envision a life without cancer and rediscover who they are.
Learn more at ConnectingChampions.org.
The Center at Midland
The Center, located on the border of Pennsylvania and Ohio, has a mission to “equip and empower generations through Christ.” They seek to accomplish this by focusing on youth development, adult/family programming and community development. Mentoring is a key component for all of their programs at every age. The Center’s after-school program utilizes group mentoring and Everyday Mentoring approaches. Their peer-mentoring program matches high school students one-to-one with kids ages 4-7. This site-based program allows high school students to develop crucial leadership skills and it gives the younger students positive role models and influencers in their lives.
The Center finds mentoring to be a catalyst for positive, sustainable change for the students involved.
