Teammates Mentoring Sidney’s youth

Making a difference in the world can sometime be as easy as being a mentor, after all the children truly are our future.

The Teammates Mentoring program was founded by Tom and Nancy Osborne, said Sidney’s Teammates Coordinator Angie Jacobsen, “20 years ago in Lincoln and started with some football players.”

The program extended from its roots in focusing on troubled youths to a focus on youths in general and youth who wish to participate, Jacobsen said.

“In the last 20 years research has shown that every kid can benefit from another caring adult in their life,” she added.

The Teammates Mentoring program was reintroduced to Sidney “last year at the beginning of the school year,” said President of the Teammates Sidney Program and Principal of Sidney Middle School Brandon Ross.

Jacobsen said in other branches of the program across the state, “students are nominated by teachers or parents, or other staff, in Sidney we are 100 percent self-nominated.”

“That makes it very exciting because the kids absolutely want to be a part of the program, they are not being coerced into do it or convinced that they need to, they are totally doing it on their own,” she continued.

The program connects willing adults, according to Ross, who can pass the two background checks the program runs and are over the age of 18.

According to Ross, the child’s ages can range from, “fifth through eighth grade.”

He went on to say, “If they get a mentor that sticks with them, they will continue on with that same adult through high school, but we do not do new matches in the high school.”

The reasoning behind this is because, “the better ages to begin mentoring are fifth through eighth grade,” Ross said.

“But we also have some ninth graders who started last year” that are still with their mentors, Jacobsen added.

At this time, Jacobsen estimated the program has just over 70 matched mentor and mentees within the Sidney area.

However, Ross said, “We have more students wanting mentors than we have mentors. So just as soon as we get an adult who passes the background test we match them.”

“We have about 50 more kids waiting for a mentor,” Jacobsen said. “And these are all kids asking for a mentor.”

There is no set criteria for what makes a good mentor Ross said other than an adult willing to spend some time with a child.

“We do look at gender a little bit. We like to keep male students with male mentors and female students with female mentors. But the big thing we would like to see is interest. It’s one hour during the week, through the school year, on the school campus, to visit with them,” he said. “Anytime we can get them (mentors) in and work it in to their schedule and the students schedule we will do it.”

The way the program matches adults with children, according to Angie is by having the students and mentors “go through a training process, and part of that is a short interview that we ask questions about their interests and hobbies, things that they like.”

From the results of this questioning she is then able to match adults with children who share the same types of interest that she believes will a good pairing.

The path to becoming a mentor is fairly easy, “There is an application we can give the adult looking to become a mentor or they can go to teammates.org fill out and turn in the application to the school. Once we get the application we run the background checks and once that is complete, Angie matches them.”

The background checks run on applicants are through the Department of Health and Human Resources as well as a Criminal background check to ensure the safety of the children.

The mentors and mentees decide upon what activity they would like to do that week, such as games, crafts, help with homework, just an activity with the children.

An example of the great things the mentors and their mentees have done while spending time together was the recent silent auction of holiday wreaths and small decorated Christmas trees.

“The tree and wreath project was the idea of one of our mentors Ashley Barnhart she and some of her friends thought of the idea, they coordinated it and took care of all the details and the Teammate board members over saw it and gave her our blessing.”

When asked how well the auction went, Jacobsen said, “It was phenomenal! We raised over $800 dollars and we had over 40 mentors and mentees participate. We had about 43 wreaths and trees on the auction blocks. Every single one was bought! So it was very exciting! And the response of the community was over whelming!

The proceeds raised for the silent auction go right back into keeping the Teammates program running.

Jacobsen said the Teammates program participants hoped to continue to do fund raising events or projects to help with “the cost of membership, using the Teammates name and the benefits that come along with that, background checks and liability insurance so if grant money runs out the program will have available funds to fall back upon”.

However, she also said the intent is to keep a nice balance within the program because, “the mentoring is meant to build relationships between the mentor and the student, so our focus is always on building the relationship.”

The balance she feels will be found in ensuring neither mentor nor mentee gets overwhelmed by too many fund raisers, but just enough for many of the pairings to come together from time to time.