Interview Story - Mentor / Leadership

I was running the Boys and Girls Club of Savannah’s Youth Programs. We were developing a summer “Counselor in Training” program for rising 6th-8th graders, in order to continue engaging with this age cohort outside of the school year.

The prior attempt at this program, several years earlier, didn’t work. CITs felt bored and were getting into trouble or disappearing for hours. I saw an opportunity to create more structure and give more responsibility to increase engagement.

I called up 5 youth program directors at other Boys and Girls Clubs and asked about their summer programs.

One director expressed a lot of success with this age group and shared great ideas. The others had helpful tips on what to do and what not to. I decided to create a “laddered” mentoring program. Our CITs would have specific campers that they would mentor. Meanwhile, our CITs would have mentors who came and ran programs developed for them.

I got in touch with former Savannah Boys and Girls Club members who were now in college and asked them to be our senior mentors. I scheduled them for weekly talks where they could share their stories.

On the first day of camp, I explained to these CITs they would-be mentors and introduced them to their mentee campers. I set up games and opened the gym so they could take time to connect and bond.

My CITs loved getting to act like a kid as a mentor, and they appreciated being treated like a young adult as a mentee. Throughout the summer, I introduced special trips to connect our CITs to both groups in different ways.

About ¾ through the summer, I got really sick and had to stay home for a couple of days. The director of fundraising stepped in to cover for me. The CITs could have taken advantage of her. But they ended up running the camp and being a big help.

Because of this laddered mentoring, both campers and the CITs had incredible summers. They hugged and cried, saying goodbye to one another the last day. Aside from a few long lunches, we didn’t have any truancy or real behavior problems as in the past. We decided to introduce this model to our after-school programs as well.