INC NEWS - Parents can be mentors

[Ken Gasch]

>From Letters to the Editor in Today's Herald Sun:

Parents can be mentors

In a recent column titled "Filling a void or creating one," John McCann wrote about backing away from a mentoring program in order to spend time with his own family. As a parent, I certainly understand that his wife and daughter come first. Still, I think it could be possible for McCann to weave his own family life and a mentoring relationship together, creating a fabric that would be much stronger and more colorful than the individual threads.

McCann rejects that possibility because of the age of his daughter, saying that he won't be taking his two-year-old around some knuckleheads. I can appreciate his reluctance to expose his daughter to some of the teenaged troublemakers who might end up in mentoring programs. However, many of the programs -- including the Big Sib program managed by the Volunteer Center for the Department of Social Services -- work with children as young as six. I can easily picture a 6-year-old happily going on McCann family outings to ballgames and museums or hanging out at the McCann house for pizza and a movie.

And the effect on McCann's daughter might actually be quite positive, as it is likely that she could benefit from interactions with another child who's a few years older. So I hope McCann will reconsider; if so, my colleagues at the Volunteer Center would be happy to match him up with a child who's a good fit with his family. He'd be a great mentor, and we certainly need him.

The writer is executive director of the Volunteer Center of Durham.

LEIGH SCOTT
Durham
March 14, 200
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