Here’s what it takes to brighten two lives: One hour a week.
Seem like a stretch? Ask Damon Flowers and Kylen Solvik.
The Port Townsend pair started meeting last September, just hanging out, after the Olympic Peninsula YMCA matched them up in its Building Futures program.
Kylen and Damon, who get together at Blue Heron every week for an hour, are one of 30 Port Townsend-area matches in the North Olympic Peninsula-wide project, said Kim Hammers, Building Futures’ Jefferson County coordinator.
And while young men like these two may not talk a lot about the benefits of mentorship, Hammers just heard some good news.
Full of confidence
“Today, I was told by one of Damon’s teachers how tall Damon walks when he is with Kylen, how self-confident he becomes when they are together,” she said last week.
If this were 2009, Solvik, a junior at Port Townsend High School, would have been called a “big brother” while Damon, a Blue Heron Middle School fourth-grader, would have been a “little brother.”
But last year, the North Olympic Peninsula’s Big Brothers-Big Sisters program lost its funding and disbanded.
The YMCA stepped in and adopted the mentorship program in both Clallam and Jefferson counties; the Y soon began inviting both adults and high school students to apply to become Building Futures mentors.
Mentors can range in age from 15 to 100, added Samantha Garwood, the Clallam County coordinator of Building Futures.
They’re matched with children in first through sixth grades and receive training from the Building Futures staff — Garwood or Hammers, depending on which county they’re in — and then make arrangements to spend time with their students each week.
The get-togethers take place at school, so the pairs can use the library, playground, cafeteria or gym to play board games, work on an art project or, as E.J. Olson got to do, decorate cookies made by her mentor, Susan Fahrenholtz.
E.J., short for Emily Juliet, is a sixth-grader at Jefferson School in Port Angeles who’s been enjoying time with Fahrenholtz since October.
Sometimes just talk
The two like to play hangman, draw and just talk. Like Kylen and Damon, they don’t need video games, field trips or much of anything besides each other.
“You don’t have to take [your student] to a Mariners game,” Garwood said with a smile.
To break the ice in a new match, she suggests the student take his or her mentor for a tour of the school.
That gives the youngster a chance to tell a story or two about life on campus; for the mentor, it tends to bring back memories of grade school.
And Garwood has a collection of board games, such as checkers and Yahtzee, at the ready.
Seeking mentors
Both she and Hammers hope to make many more matches this year, at elementary and middle schools across Clallam and Jefferson counties.
“This is an opportunity for [mentors] to enhance their lives and enhance a child’s life,” Hammers said, “and there’s a lot of support.
“I provide training, and I have coffee dates with my adult mentors and brown-bag lunch dates with my high school mentors.”
Added Garwood: “We have lots of boys who need male role models. We’re starting to get men,” into the Building Futures ranks, “but we always need more.”
Matches across Peninsula
Building Futures has made matches at Jefferson, Roosevelt and Franklin elementary schools and Stevens Middle School in Port Angeles; Helen Haller Elementary in Sequim; Grant Street Elementary and Blue Heron Middle School in Port Townsend; and Chimacum Creek Primary, Chimacum Elementary and Chimacum Middle School.
Garwood said she wants to expand to others, and that it’s just a matter of mentors being able to get to the school each week.
This summer, she added, bowling parties and picnics are on the agenda.
Would-be mentors must provide three character references. The application fee is $20 for adults or $10 for high school students, “but we don’t turn anyone away,” Hammers said.
Applicants must submit to background checks and are asked to make a one-year commitment to the program.
And while the high-schoolers sometimes move away after graduation, Hammers added, there are older mentors who have outlasted that requirement.
Jay Lowenstein, a retired schoolteacher, has been a mentor for two years to Alex, now a sixth-grader at Blue Heron Middle School.
They got together when the Big Brothers Big Sisters program was operating and stuck together after it changed to Building Futures.
“You get to know somebody pretty well,” Lowenstein said. “I started with Alex when he was in fourth grade. So I’ve watched him grow up. I’ve seen him change.”
Their activities are the unplugged variety: games of chess, drawing, writing poems together, talking. Alex doesn’t need homework help, Lowenstein said; he’s already a straight-A student.
“There are a lot of children out there,” Lowenstein added, “who need someone they can talk to . . . There are a lot of things they can learn from you, and a lot of things you can learn from them.”
For a Building Futures mentor application, phone the nearest YMCA: 360-385-5811 in Port Townsend or 360-452-9244 in Port Angeles.
Garwood can also be reached at sam@olympicpeninsulaYMCA.org, while Hammers is at 360-774-6342 and JeffcoMentorsKim@gmail.com.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
