Boys & Girls Club Blog

Can you believe it’s January 2018 already?! With a New Year often comes the creation of new goals and New Year’s resolutions. Usually the most common resolutions are to get healthy, exercise more, save money, or to focus more on self-care. What if I said you could focus on one or more of those goals and also give back to your community?

Volunteering is a great way to give back to your community, and did you know that volunteering has its own personal benefits to your health? Research done by Corporation of National & Community Service (CNCS) shows that  those who volunteer have lower mortality rates, greater functional ability, and lower rates of depression later in life than those who do not volunteer.

There is a volunteer opportunity here at the Boys & Girls Club of Oshkosh that would allow you to work on getting healthy and exercising more while giving back to the Oshkosh Area and making a difference in the life of a local youth—become a mentor in our Great Futures Start Here Mentoring program!

With our Great Futures Start Here Mentoring Program, we match volunteer mentors with middle and high school youth who could benefit from having a mentor. While meeting with your mentee, you can work out in our fitness center, shoot hoops in the gym, prepare a healthy snack, and even participate in other activities around the Club that create healthy habits.

Not only are you helping yourself, but you could be making a difference in the life of a youth who needs a positive and caring role model outside of school. We have a current waiting list of both male and female youth who are waiting to get matched with a mentor. By dedicating 1 hour a week or 4 hours a month you could help a youth perform better in school, work on social skills, develop a career plan for when they graduate high school, and just be there as someone who can help them work through the daily stressors of being a teen.

The Club completes a needs assessment on a yearly basis on the mentoring program, and this year here is what we have found from talking with the youth who are new to the program or are still waiting to get matched with a mentor.

• 72% need academic assistance
• 42% need a caring and consistent adult figure
• 39% need help with social skills
• 19% need help with future life planning
• 11% need help staying out of trouble, including truancy and law issues

Overall, mentees all need a caring, consistent adult in their life. Many youth who come to the Club lack positive adult role models or have anyone they can and want to confide in. You could be someone who helps make a difference in their life, while also accomplishing some goals of your own.

If you haven’t already come up with a New Year’s resolution, maybe you could consider volunteering and helping someone else better their own life as one of your new goals.

For more information on becoming a mentor at the Boys & Girls Club of Oshkosh please contact the Great Futures Mentoring Coordinator, Carlea Liermann, at 920-233-1414, ext. 27 or carleal@bgcosh.org.

By: Carlea Liermann
Great Futures Mentoring Coordinator
Boys & Girls Club of Oshkosh