By Matthew Dooley Staff writer
able to apply for a new leadership mentoring program in March.
The program is a collaboration between Jourdan Harris, an AmeriCorps Vista worker at Susquehanna, and the new Regional Engagement Center, which is being built on Eighth Street and Mill Street in Selinsgrove.
The Susquehanna students who become mentors will be working with local teenagers.
The mentors will be teaching leadership skills to teens from a few different schools in the area.
Harris said, “Last year, one of the students here, Josh [Levesque], had helped with the teen club so I considered him a mentor, and it was like a test run to see how things had to be worked out. I would really love if we had [Susquehanna] mentors and they had their teens once we open up the [Regional Engagement Center].”
The Regional Engagement Center, where mentors will lead the teens in the future, “is a new community center that will be opening over the summer,” according to Harris.
According to Kelly Feiler, the director of the REC, the facility will be finished in July. It will help the community by “inspiring ideas, enriching lives and engaging all generations in educational, recreational and charitable activities,” Harris said.
“One goal is [for the mentors] to work on academics [with the teens]. Most of the [teens] come right over from school. They walk over from school. So, helping them with their homework. Playing games with them. Right now it is a little more difficult because we are on campus and not at the center, which is going to have a bunch of resources to be able to do arts and crafts and to play basketball or pool with them. But for now just having games and stuff going on and in the beginning getting to know each other. It is going to be open and relaxed. Just being that role model for them,” Harris said.
The program helps the teens who attend learn a lot of useful life skills, including social skills, according to Harris.
“There are about 15 [teens] that come every week. It’s been very cool to see them develop. They wouldn’t talk to each other. They were in their own little groups when we first started meeting, and now they are really good friends,” Harris said.
According to Feiler, the REC will provide many opportunities for kids including an after-school program for fifth-graders, a summer day camp for first to fifth-graders, music and art classes, homework help, a teen leadership club and a teen business innovation zone.
Once the applications for the mentoring program become available to Susquehanna students anyone is eligible to sign up.