More than a dozen mentorship organizations are taking part in a Jan. 24 community conference and are looking for volunteers to become beacons in the lives of marginalized or vulnerable youth.
Navigating the tumultuous teenage years can be tough, especially without an adult’s guidance.
For Miracle Teo, now 20, it took a mentor’s help to weather the storm of emotions she had as a teenager when her mother had to move out of the country to care for an aging family member.
“The only person I had a relationship with at that time was with my mom, and she had left,” Teo recalled. “I felt unnoticed; that’s when I started hanging with another crowd.”
At 15, Teo said she began cutting classes and became heavily involved with drinking and smoking. Things were going downhill quickly.
She was placed on house arrest at the age of 16. After she failed the Deferred Entry of Judgment program, or DEJ, the courts placed Teo on a more strictly supervised form of probation that required her to take a law course.
This is where she would meet Joe Herrity at Fresh Lifelines for Youth, a mentorship organization that specializes in pairing mentors with teens in the juvenile drug court system.
“I wasn’t that into it, but he mentioned I would be able to leave the house,” Teo said with a laugh. “To my surprise I began to enjoy it.
“It was nice to have someone to hang out with. As [my mentor and I] got to know each other, I got more comfortable with opening up. She was genuine, and she’s been there to point things out to me in a positive way.”
Teo said there were times that she was living without electricity or having to steal food with only her mentor there to listen to her troubles.
“She helped me fight through it and finish my probation,” Teo said. She finished high school early and moved on to community college and job training. Recently, Teo gained full-time employment with a large tech firm as an IT analyst.
It’s relationships such as the one Teo developed with her mentor that Herrity, also a co-founder of the South Bay Mentor Coalition, believes will make a true difference.
“We had the same problems 100 years ago; nothing is different in terms of problems,” he said. “The thing that changes lives is human relationships, not programs.
“Almost everyone who is successful has had some mentor in their life, whether it is family or a teacher,” he said. “There are a lot of young folks in this community who don’t have access to those types of folks.”
The upcoming mentoring conference is a way for adults to take a look at the different models of organizations and find their niche, said Pattie Cortese, who is also a co-founder of the Coalition.
She said adults don’t need to worry about whether they are successful enough or have checked off certain life goals. People of all walks of life are encouraged to sign up as a mentor.
“It’s about walking that journey of self-discovery with them,” Cortese said. She herself became a mentor in 1994 when her husband, Dave, was on the East Side Union High School District board.
“That experience radically changed my life,” she said. “I came out a different person.”
Herrity echoed this sentiment, saying, “You don’t have to be perfect; you have to show up.”
“You’re not there to solve their problems. You are there to hold that image of their best self until they are ready to take it.”
At the conference, several organizations including Fresh Lifelines for Youth, Boys and Girls Club of Silicon Valley and Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Bay Area, will be available for prospective mentors to ask questions.
Register for the Jan. 24 event, to be held at County Government Center, 70 W. Hedding, San Jose, at sccgov.org/mentoringconference.
