SCHOOL-BASED MENTORING PROGRAM REACHES OUT TO KIDS AND MAKES THE GRADE

This weekly program offers a quality mentoring experience to more than 60 teens and 60 youngsters each school year. The TriVillage Mentor League presently awards at least two college scholarships each year to two volunteer teen mentors for their efforts and enthusiasm through its John Miller Scholarship Fund.

All of our TVML/BBBS school-based mentoring programs take place at a designated and supervised school location. A typical afternoon begins with the mentors helping the students with homework (if desired), followed by an activity that includes games, sports, a craft project, or group activity. This program builds self-esteem and confidence as well as friendship and leadership skills among the youngsters and volunteer teen mentors.

The TriVillage Mentor League strives to stengthen the connection between BBBS and the two local school districts by providing necessary networking and funding to help the school-based program succeed. We offer assistance by providing organizational, financial, promotional, administrative, and community support. Providing this assistance enhances the connection between the community (residents, parents, young people, school staff), school districts, and BBBS for the benefit of young people.

This multi-faceted partnership began with a $2,000 donation from Members First Credit Union's Beverly Paul Memorial Scholarship fund to the TriVillage Mentor League to help with its programming costs for the 2007-2008 school year and includes funding for TVML’s John Miller Scholarship fund.

Through this fund, two college scholarships are awarded to graduating seniors who are volunteer teen mentors with TVML/BBBS from Grandview Heights and Upper Arlington high schools. In addition, Members First’s donation will fund summer enrichment scholarship opportunities to need-based youngsters, which will provide them with a safe, healthy, and an encouraging atmosphere with positive role modeling and mentoring.

The partnership also includes a large financial education component - a yearlong after school program for the 2007-2008 school year with monthly financial activities at Stevenson Elementary of the Grandview Heights School system, and at Windermere and Tremont Elementary Schools in Upper Arlington. 

These activities, which were developed by Members First Credit Union exclusively for the partnership, will educate children of various ages and their high school mentors about financial topics such as how to save and spend money wisely, how to develop and stick to a spending plan, and how to determine a need versus a want.

The purpose of the partnership is to encourage financial awareness among the young students, and to increase financial literacy among the teen mentors in a fun and encouraging atmosphere. 

“Our goal for the program is for the teens and the young students alike to learn the basics of financial literacy so they are able to apply those skills in their own lives,” says Amanda Callicoat, marketing and business development manager for Members First Credit Union. “The younger
you teach children about money, the more ahead of the game they’ll be when they enter the adult world and have to handle their own finances.”

“This partnership is a win-win for everyone involved,” says Hayley Head, director for the TriVillage Mentor League. “Thanks to Members First Credit Union’s support, the TriVillage Mentor League is able to enhance our TVML/BBBS school-based partnership program.” Head also says that, in addition to building leadership and life skills with the students involved, “this collaboration promotes financial literacy and allows our teen volunteers and youngsters to grow life-long skills as well.”

The school-based mentoring program positively impacts approximately 60 teens and 60 youngsters each school year in the Upper Arlington and Grandview Heights districts. 2007 is the sixth year TVML has offered this free program to the area schools in partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Ohio.

Members First Credit Union, originally founded in 1957 as Big Bear Employees Credit Union, serves anyone living, working, worshiping, or attending school in Franklin County, Ohio. It has positioned itself as a progressive, full-service financial institution offering a wide range of products and services to meet the needs of its members and also member businesses.

The TriVillage Mentor League, an independently-funded partner of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Ohio, provides traditional, one-to-one mentoring opportunities for youngsters, teens, families, and adult volunteer mentors in the Upper Arlington, Grandview Heights, and Marble Cliff communities as well as a school-based mentoring program that pairs volunteer teen mentors with youngsters who are enrolled in the after school childcare programs in the Upper Arlington and Grandview Heights School Districts