Impact through mentoring

Youth agencies and organizations are constantly saying that adult mentors can make a truly positive impact on children’s lives.

But that assertion rings hollow without hearing true stories of the kids and adults who have been enriched through mentoring.

Team HOPE, a Leadership Johnson County group, is creating a promotionalvideo featuring testimony from mentors and the children they’ve helped. The video will be distributed to any organization that wants to use it, with the hope that it can help recruit new adults to step up as role models for kids in need.

“We hope it’ll tug at the heartstrings and show that anyone can make an impact,” said Jon Carolin, a member of Team HOPE.

Carolin, a match support team leader for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Indiana, has firsthand evidence of how mentors can help young people. But he also has seen how groups can struggle recruiting those mentors to their causes.

The group wanted to find a way to tell a poignant story that illustrated how important mentoring can be.

“We decided to share some of the stories that we had, put it out in a video that other organizations could use to get more people involved,” Carolin said.

Team members connected with mentors in their own lives, and the youths that have been affected by that. They asked the pairs to come in and tell their story on camera.

That footage is being edited and put together to form a sleek, professional recruitment tool. Once it’s done, it’ll be unveiled at a Leadership Johnson County event in March with area mentoring organizations, who can ask questions about it and use it for their own missions.

It’ll also be out on YouTube, with links that let people learn more about the matches and aspects of mentoring they’re interested in, Carolin said.