Welcome Back!

So yesterday was our first tutoring session of the winter quarter! Despite the sub-zero temperatures, a number of new students joined us as we entered a new year of one-on-one tutoring/mentoring. I was excited to see both of our college zone counselors, Carla Reyes and Stephanie Rogers making the rounds, introducing themselves to our upperclassmen in order to determine their college needs. Carla and Stephanie will be running our new College Zone, which was built over the winter break to serve as a resource center for our college-bound students. The Youth Leadership Council (YLC) met before tutoring to discuss a number of pressing issues here at Cabrini Connections. The kids were excited to get underway on a mentoring month activity that will be unveiled later this month (shhhhhh it's a secret).

Since with our Development Coordinator Cassina out of the picture, I am now going to be playing a greater role in ensuring the financial health of Cabrini Connections we also discussed how the YLC could potentially play a role in fundraising for Cabrini Connections, which the kids were enthusiastic about, explaining how easy it would be to raise money via candy sales at school. This is something that we are likely to persue, since it has since come to my attention that selling 12 fundraising boxes of king sized candy at a buck a pop can easily earn us over a thousand bucks. This form of fundraising nets us additional benefits as well. First and foremost by fundraising independently for our program the kids would be taking some ownership and responsibility for the economic health of Cabrini Connections, inspiring others to follow in their footsteps. Secondly, by selling candy, the kids would be telling their peers and fellow community members about the value of our program. This is particularly key right now as we have space for at least 10 more students that we are looking to fill as soon as possible. Hopefully we will make a final decision on this at our next YLC meeting and get this fundraiser underway before the end of National Mentoring Month.

What are you going to do to help before National Mentoring Month ends?