2nd Meeting of the Mentors and Mentees

I’m happy to report we have a new mentor, Marco Samayoa who is a writer, has taught before and lives in East LA. Cookie Fischer is back (hooray!) having just missed the volcanic cloud which kept Europeans in Europe and Americans in America and is still holding back international travel patterns. Marco Torres will also be here for the first time, for the 6:30 session.

We have 10 mentors and need 6 more by the end of the month! I’m going Thursday to talk to UCLA School of Social Work to see about getting more mentors on board.  The suggestions to go talk to Trade Tech, FIT, USC Schools of Social Work and Education, Cardenas High School continue as ways to attract mentors.  Meanwhile VolunteerMatch.com has brought in several as well.

I got an array of 3 types of "tween" books and the kids can write their name in one they want to read and you can begin reading with them. They can take the book home with their journal if they promise to bring them back. We have Hannah Montana, High School Musical books. If they finish one, they can start the other if they want and keep it too. I know Alexa will love them, I hope the other kids will…or that they can choose from other books in the library hopefully.   We will also start our own book drive to bring in more books and in a couple of weeks The Molina Foundation may be ready to give us around 200 more books.

On the blog you will find some help about recognizing reading patterns. In the library are various work books as well which range from math to puzzles, bilingual books and English.  Bring your iPODs…I hope we’ll have some access to computers as Biro likes gaming Barry was going to look into that.

I attach a roster of everyone with a special note from Sara to the mentors in her program. (Barry, Carla, Marco Samayoa and Troy Krouse).

So far so good!!!  Many thanks for your high levels of commitment!