Champaign-Urbana One-to-One Mentoring Program

Youth mentoring can have tremendous impact on both the adult and the child. In a typical program, mentors visit with their "mentee" for approximately one hour per week during the school day, on the school grounds, during the school year. Mentors and mentees usually spend their time together doing fun and creative activities: talking/listening, playing games, doing something physical like going for a walk on school grounds or playing basketball, reading, exploring on the computer, doing experiments, doing art/craft projects and more. Mentors' goal is to build a relationship of trust with their mentee.

University employees may use an hour of release time per week for mentoring in local elementary and secondary schools, as provided by policy in the Campus Administrative Manual.
http://ap.illinois.edu/community/givingback/mentor.html

Wednesday noons, all summer
Cherry Alley, next to Urbana Free Library

Join us for lunch, music and family fun. We'll have a booth and information about mentoring. Come and bring a friend! Free cold drinks and treats.

Workplace Mentoring Internship Program

A partnership of C-U One-to-One Mentoring and the C-U Business Community

A Model for School-Business Partnerships

Program Objective: To provide Champaign-Urbana high school students involved in the C-U One-to-One Mentoring Program an opportunity for intensive workplace mentoring with a focus on teaching work habits, work skills and helping the individual student to discover the various opportunities available to them in a specific employment area.

Plan: For the summer of 2010, five businesses are offering 10 students involved in the mentoring program the opportunity to work alongside a manager or director for a period of six weeks in the summer on a full time basis. Students are paid at minimum wage and receive no benefits. They participate in all aspects of employee orientation.

In May of each year the Mentoring Scholarship Foundation sponsors a banquet for C-U One-to-One mentor/mentee pairs in Champaign/Urbana Schools. The goals of this event are two-fold:
* To encourage mentors to commit to another year of mentoring their students, and
* To encourage students to stay in school, graduate and pursue continuing education.

The highlight of the Middle School/High School banquet each year is the presentation of scholarships to our graduating Seniors. Fifteen Urbana and Champaign Seniors received this scholarship in 2010. Sixty nine scholarships have been awarded to C-U One-to-One mentees since the first scholarship was given in 1999 to Denise Graves.

2010 Scholarship Banquet for Middle School/High School

Thursday, May 6th
500 people attended! See photos of our graduates on the Graduates page.

2010 Elementary Year-End Pizza Party

Wednesday, April 28th

National Mentoring Month: January 2010

January, 2010, was the 9th annual National Mentoring Month.

National Mentoring Month Breakfast for all school-based mentors in Champaign-Urbana was held at the Vineyard Church Cafe, 1500 N. Lincoln Avenue, Urbana.
Wednesday, January 13th

Thank Your Mentor Day was Thursday, January 21st. The following businesses generously donated goods or services for our Mentor Benefit Card: Aroma Cafe; Bella Mia/Home; Blossom Basket; Body n' Sole; Courier Cafe; Dandelion Vintage Clothing; Fiesta Cafe; Mettler Center; Milo's Restaurant and Strawberry Fields. THANKS to each business sponsor!

All month: Tell your friends that MENTORING WORKS!

Mentor Training Schedule

2010 Mentor Training Sessions for fall semester:
Tuesday, September 28, 2010, 6:30-8:30 p.m. (Place TBA)
Wednesday, October 6, 2010, 6:30-8:30 p.m. Champaign Public Library

Mentors will begin mentoring in early/mid-October. Apply now to be sure you can start meeting with your new mentee as soon as possible!

If you are interested in mentoring, complete attached application form and send to Barbara Linder (for Urbana Schools): blinder@usd116.org or
Lauren Smith (for Champaign Schools): smithla@champaignschools.org