Our vision for MENtoring is to provide young male adults with an opportunity to learn and grow from children to young warriors as they venture out into our fast paced, rapidly advancing world.  Our young members of society need more personal interaction than ever due to the requirements and high expectations for success in our society.  Youth interaction is on a decline when they need it the most.

MENtoring is an after school, weekend, and summer program that will be run with fundamentals rooted from the great Coach John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success.  Each of our participants will be working towards an overall objective of improving the world around them through detailed planning and hard work.  In order to do this, they will receive hands on, real life training from our program volunteers.

MENtoring will also provide a platform for interacting with families in need in our local communities that may not be receiving the help necessary to support a healthy environment for raising a family.  Our public support efforts are frequently abused and those who are in true need of help are neglected.  We will make aggressive efforts to provide these families assistance and ongoing support to prevent family hardships.

Overall, we want to create warriors with high school diplomas that know each and every one of them can do whatever they set their minds to regardless of their family situations or level of opportunities.  The mind is a beautiful thing and we as a nation need to be better at helping our children see that each individual has an ability to excel in what they set their hearts to accomplish. 

About MENtoring

Our mission is to find the youth in our community that may not be receiving the attention and guidance needed to fully develop as stable, hard working young men.  This is done in order to develop their skills so they can give back to their own community and surrounding neighborhoods when they mature to adulthood.

Each participant enrolled in our program will receive hands on attention from individual and small group interaction.  Each child will have a specific MENtor to assist them with the entire program.  Please contact us if you are interested in changing the lives of some of our talented participants.

Our Reward System

There is no better way to experience success than through direct reward.  We are using gifted sports card and memorabilia collections as a monetary system for our program.  To teach our participants the value of money, we will be issuing them credits earned from community activities and working to form a real world scenario for the value of money.  The credits received will be good for purchases in our inventory of donated sports collectibles that can accumulate and appreciate in value over time to create personal savings accounts for our participants.  Our objective beyond assisting the participants in growing and preserving their collections is to accumulate a monetary fund through charitable cash donations and fund raisers.  The participants may be able to access the funds upon completion of our program to assist the them with college tuition, technical training, or small business start up costs.  Each individual’s collection will be held as collateral until they achieve their specified early stage goals (college/technical school graduation, full time employment, start their own business, etc.).  After they complete these goals, their collections are returned for their personal use.  Our hope is that they will use them as donations back to our program to provide help to those that can utilize the system that helped make them successful.

How Our Participants Earn Credits

Each participant will have one-on-one guidance from our MENtoring volunteers to help set up plans that include areas of interest and passion for our participants.  Our volunteers will use these plans to guide each child and see them through a personal development process.  Good grades in school, volunteering for other community organizations, helping elders in the area, and keeping our towns and cities clean are just a few activities that will earn them MENtoring credits.  Those credits will go directly towards purchasing their own collection of sports memorabilia for accumulation.

Banking

Our program will have a facility that can safely store our sports memorabilia in fire and waterproof safes.  The participants are allowed to access them for viewing, add to their individual collections, and trade with their peers in monitored exchanges.

Banking statements will be issued to all participants to show their current market value and the growth in value they achieved through contributions and appreciation.  As our participants approach the completion of our program, we will work to teach them how to invest and save their money once they begin earning income.  At this point, their experiences with collecting sports memorabilia can be converted to lessons on savings and investments for them to use in the real world.

Other Activities

Work - Each participant will be responsible for sorting and researching the value of cards and memorabilia collected from donors.  In addition, they will be working with Microsoft Excel and similar Mac programs to learn the functions and importance of computer calculation tools.  This is a valuable piece of our mission because it will show the importance of tracking business and knowing its source for future experiences.

After inventorying donated collections, we will help them produce invoices for tax deductions along with thank you letters to each donor.  We feel that teaching the process of a formal thank you is an important life lesson that any gesture of kindness deserves.

Sports Leagues - Baseball, basketball, and football are some of the team sport activities we will initially establish.  Our goal is to use recreational sports to promote active lifestyles and the importance of teamwork early in our participants’ lives. 

Field Trips - Sports are the backbone of our program.  We have plans to travel to collegiate and professional sports games in order to reward those participants who excel beyond expectations.

Donations

Monetary donations are among one of our needs.  However, our initial goal is to find those who have collected sports cards and memorabilia in the past and encourage them to donate to our cause.  If the memorabilia is currently stored in an attic or tucked in a closet, please bring it to us and watch your charitable donation go to work transforming the lives of your community’s youth.  We will organize, inventory, and create an accurate market value in order for you to use this as a personal tax donation.  We can also store and preserve a portion of your collection for later donations upon your discretion.

MENtoring is a program established under ITB Foundation, a 501 (c)(3) Tax Exempt Organization; therefor all donations are tax deductible.

Staff

In order for us to succeed with our objectives as an organization, it is going to take a huge effort from our volunteers.  We currently have commitments from several young entrepreneurs and professionals that would like to dedicate some of their philanthropic time to assisting in the development of our participants and the program.  If you are interested in volunteering or have any ideas to help evolve our mission, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Facility

MENtoring is currently looking for a home.  Our goal is to partner with another sports related facility to double as a place we can sort and inventory our sports collectible assets and work with the participants on their sports skills.

Projected Growth

We have expectations to operate out of three facilities in the Triangle.  Our current goal is to launch a test phase in Apex to cater to the youth in Apex, Holly Springs, Cary, and some areas of Morrisville.  Once our system is proven, we plan to expand to Southeast Raleigh and Durham.  It is our expectation to face some challenges in our initial phase, but with a nationwide objective for our program we plan to expand rapidly as soon as our system is perfected.