Rural recruitment

I thought this comment from Cristine Kelly in another thread offered some good ideas on the topic of rural recruitment and so I'm pasting it here.

Happy holidays!

Erich

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Re: What are you doing for National Mentoring Month?

We are a small rural mentoring partnership funded by OJJDP and in our first year of development. What I noticed in our area is that there is little known about mentoring, its possibilities and challenges. We are without a state mentoring partnership (California), and since we are in a rural region, our partnership is much more intimate and hands on.

We are planning on developing a "corps" of leaders in our community who can actively help us spread the word. On January 24, we are holding an event we're calling "Champions for Mentoring". The idea is to inspire, educate, and mobilize cross sector leaders in our community about the benefits and challenges of youth mentoring. We'll open with a presentation on the need- educating them about where we need to make a difference. We will then have a quick workshop session where we will divide our audience and send them around the room to the various programs and partners, who will do a quick game or demonstration. To conclude, we will bring them back together, honor some special matches, and then go forth with a call to action- recruit 100 potential mentors in 100 days.

We're aiming for local media attention (newspaper and radio), as well as getting our town and county officials involved. Business sponsorship in this economic clime is more apt to be goods and services than financial, but we're honored for any support at this point!

I'll let you know how it goes. I think there is vast potential for collaborative effort among programs and agencies in our area and am excited to be engaging and serving them.

__________________

Cristine Kelly
Program Director
Sierra Mentoring Partnership
Nevada CIty, CA 95959
530-265-2900

Hi Lisa-

Another thing that I am trying out is Facebook. I noticed that it is becoming a big way for people to communicate in our area. Sustainability is a growing issue- protecting our environment, local economy, and local food production. Social sustainability seems a natural growth from that movement, so we'll appeal to that by creating a FB network. Anything that is viral is important to rural outreach.

Thanks for the plug, Erich!

Cristine