Friends of the Children Providing Opportunities for Portland Youth

(from the April 2009 Newsletter)

Friends of the Children is a revolutionary mentoring program that is transforming the lives of Portland’s most vulnerable children with paid, professional mentors, called Friends. These Friends provide our most vulnerable and challenged children a loving, caring, nurturing and sustained relationship with an adult role model who teaches values and has attainable expectations for each child in order that they become healthy, productive members of our community.

Conducting an intensive six-week assessment in the kindergarten classes of eight Portland neighborhoods characterized by poverty and crime, Friends of the Children specifically identifies youth in our community who face significant challenges. Ryan, a fifteen year-old adolescent in the Friends of the Children – Portland program, shares what his relationship with Darren, his Friend, has brought into his life since entering the program as a kindergartener in 1999.

I met my mentor, Darren ten years ago, and we’ve shared a strong bond since. Without him, I don’t know what I would’ve turned out like. He’s the reason I’m so talented in school, because in my early years he took time to come see me and help me with my homework. Now that I do homework on my own time, we can do a lot more fun things together.

Of course we’ve had our good days, but no one can forget our bad times either. Some of our bad times include when he can’t come pick me up because I’m in trouble or something comes up. Others include when we first met, I argued and threw temper tantrums a lot. We’ve had our bad days, but we’ve overcome them. Our glory days outnumber our bad days one thousand fold.

My mentor has gotten me into so many programs that I’ve lost count. When I was younger, he used to get me involved in the Saturday activities at PSU. He has also gotten me into Friday night programs through Friends of the Children where they take a bunch of kids in the program out to do something fun. They also have programs on Wednesday afternoons that help kids with their homework or just provide a hang out spot. There are so many opportunities out there and my mentor has helped me find them.

Another thing my mentor has helped me with has been getting an internship. Just this summer, I got an internship at Community Energy Project through Friends of the Children that allowed me to work for six hundred dollars. The internship was off the hook. We’d work Mondays through Thursdays, and then do something fun or interesting on Fridays. Some of the things we did on Fridays included getting our food handlers and CPR/First Aid cards.

Ryan is currently doing well in school and plans to participate in the organization’s Summer Internship Program again this summer. Ryan has expressed an interest in becoming a pharmacist and knows Darren will help him find out what it will take to achieve his goals.