Friends of the Children is a long-term mentoring program for youth facing the toughest challenges and connects them with professional mentors who encourage and guide them to develop their greatest potential and achieve their goals. From kindergarten through high school graduation, no matter what. I have been working with Friends for two months now and am continually blown away by the people drawn to this organization and the amazing youth in our program. I am thankful to be a part of this team and the mission they work towards everyday.
My position as the Community Engagement Coordinator is partially about supporting the team where I work closely with many of our Directors and Team Leads to identify needs and essentials for implementing opportunities for our youth. While my position is also about getting to know our youth, their interests and challenges, and supporting mentors in supporting our youth. My day to day is a balance of office work  and meetings and playing board games or hanging out with our youth and mentors.  Some of what I am currently working on includes outreach measures to gain tutors for our volunteer tutoring program, helping to coordinate and manage our Family Giving Program, scheduling college tours and teen or k5 programming such as poetry writing workshops or college tours.
Here is our Facebook page if you’d like to know about or get involved in what is currently happening with Friends of the Children – Seattle: https://www.facebook.com/FriendsSeattle/?fref=ts. The photo featured here is of many, but not all, of my team. Some are directors, some are mentors, and some are administrative support like myself. On this particular day we wore our college gear as part of participating in DiscoverU week.