Celebrating our amazing mentors!

Our vision of career mentors as "guides on the side"

January is National Mentoring Month! The young people in our programs have been blessed over the years with dozens of amazing mentors – from college students to retirees. 

The mentors in our new Imagining Your Future program at Herndon High School are in the same mold. Led by our Mentor Coordinator Jim Seevers (who brings decades of relevant experience, see his bio here), we recruited, among others: an anthropologist, a physician, a lawyer, Air Force and Navy veterans, a hair salon specialist, a nonprofit executive, an entrepreneur, multiple teachers, a career counselor, an international aid specialist, and (our favorite) a rocket scientist. The students gain added benefits and strengthen relationships with several of the mentors being recent Herndon HS alumni.

Our mentors also are experts at the marshmallow challenge. Or maybe the students are showing the mentors how it’s done?

But really, we tell mentors that what matters is not how interesting their career is. What matters is simply caring, showing up, and listening. That’s what our mentors do.

The impact can be dramatic. We urge you to check out this summary by Mentor.org, the national mentoring organization, on the impact of mentoring.

What makes our mentors a little different?

Regular readers of Signposts know we offer young people a unique combination of mentoring, a guided career curriculum, workshops, and at-work experiences. We invite our mentors to use our curriculum to take their conversations a little deeper. The curriculum adds fertile soil for growing rich intergenerational conversations. And we’ve learned it can energize students to really engage.

Students progress through the curriculum throughout the year, first developing their personal profile; then researching options; followed by creating goals and planning action steps (including education and training); and learning networking, communicating and resume writing. After all that, they seek at-work experiences, which (depending on their grade) might be informational interviews, field trips, shadowing, internships or vacation jobs. 

Our mentors walk alongside their students, not telling them what to do, but acting as a “guide on the side” -- encouraging, listening, and asking questions -- as the students progress through the steps. 

We offer our mentors opportunities to grow!

At Harraseeket, we don’t just train our mentors and send them off. We offer (but don’t require) continuing education and support, sessions on the curriculum, “check-in” meetings to discuss challenges and share best practices, and whatever else they need.

We were just named a 2024 GreatNonprofits Top-Rated Nonprofit -- the 3rd year in a row! 

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