Winning Futures – Inspiring and preparing youth to succeed through mentoring.

Archive for May, 2010

Mentor and mentees having fun at our Bowl for Kids event!

For the first time in the 16 years we have been facilitating mentoring and goal setting programs for students, we had a bowling outing for our mentoring teams.  Words cannot express how awesome it was!  Some of high school students had never bowled before so watching their expressions and excitement was priceless:-)

For mentoring programs, I highly suggest you arrange an outing like this.  We are a school-based program where we spend 90% of the mentoring interactions at the school.  This is a great activity where the adults and students can all have fun like a kid – no matter their age.

Do you have any other great activities you would like to share?

Mentor of the Year, Anna, and her mentee at bowling

This week was AMAZING!! We awarded $20,000 in scholarships to mentees in the Winning Futures Mentoring Program.  This will support our students in pursuing their education past high school.  It always amazes me every year to see the tremendous changes our mentees make with the support of their mentors and our team.  These students are shining examples for all of us no matter who we are:)

See more photos at www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Winning-Futures/358305564044?ref=ts

Display the "Values Poster" to create a positive environment!

Have students create a “Values Poster” to better understand the values they want to have.  The purpose of this activity is to get individuals to start realizing what is important to them.  Having a sense of individual values helps to facilitate the goal-setting process in all areas of life.

Provide mentors, teachers, or volunteers with a large piece of construction paper or poster board. The program facilitator will assign each team a core character value that is expected from society. 

Each team must create a poster and define the assigned value.  To arrive at a definition, the mentor/adult and mentees/students will brainstorm and put on paper all the thoughts each member discloses.

Following the brainstorming segment, each team will stand and share their value and definition with the other teams.  This activity can be completed by youth of all ages.

Samples values are:

• Perseverance
• Cooperation
• Responsibility
• Work Ethic
• Honesty
• Integrity
• Loyalty
• Positive Attitude
• Fairness
• Compassion
• Commitment
• Respect
• Good Citizen
• Discipline
• Open-Minded
• Wisdom
• Courage