chh@heraldsun.com; 918-1035
CHAPEL HILL -- Governor's One-On-One mentoring program, an off-shoot of Volunteers for Youth, seeks to match kids in Orange County with adult mentors to create solid friendships and provide positive role models.
"For the community just to help kids to grow up to be all that they can be and to reach their potential is obviously important," said Susan Worley, executive director of Volunteers for Youth.
That extra support system drew the Johnson-Davis family to the mentoring program in the first place. Marcia Johnson-Davis, a single mother of two children, said that having an extra role model for her children gave them an important outlet. She said her daughter, Mia, saw how much her older brother loved the program and asked for her own mentor.
"These kids are from broken homes and need someone other than their parents to interact with and talk to," Johnson-Davis said. "She wanted to be with other people, someone grown who she can grow up with and have fun. She loved that."
The Governor's One-On-One program hopes to take children in situations like Mia's and give them a stable, lasting friendship.
"These are kids who really just need a little extra time and attention from a caring adult," Worley said. "The goal of the mentoring program is really a very simple one, which is to form strong friendships between kids and adults."
And Mia Johnson-Davis certainly has built such a bond with her mentor, Megan Anderson, a senior elementary education major at UNC. Marcia Johnson-Davis said that if Mia doesn't hear from Anderson, she'll call her mentor herself.
"Megan is such a bundle of joy," Johnson-Davis said. "When she goes out with Megan, she has fun, so much fun that sometimes I say, 'You need to take me, too.' "
Anderson said her time with Mia is important because it breaks the girl from her day-to-day routine.
"She just gets to do things that she might never get to do," Anderson said. "She has a great family and does a lot of great activities. I have a different knowledge base than they do, so I pick different activities than maybe her mom would."
Part of that knowledge base comes from being college-aged, a segment of people Mia doesn't normally interact with, Anderson said. For example, one day driving in the car and listening to the radio, Mia looked surprised that Anderson sang along just as she did.
"She gave me this look and asked me how I knew all the words," Anderson said. "She knows people her parents' generation, and she knows people her own age, but people in between get lost."
But Mia isn't the only one benefiting from the program. Anderson said her rewards are endless, from getting to better know the area, to learning from older mentors in the program and to almost having a second family.
She said that Marcia Johnson-Davis has welcomed her into the fold, calling if she hasn't heard from the mentor and inviting Anderson over for Jamaican dinner.
"I have this transplant family that I might never have gotten if I hadn't joined this program," she said.
Marcia Johnson-Davis said she takes such good care of Anderson because of what the mentor does for her daughter, helping to talk to Mia when fights explode at home and showing her another side of life.
"Other parents should think about mentoring," Johnson-Davis said. "It's such a good program for kids. I really love Volunteers for Youth. I just really love it."
