In order to serve more youth and expand opportunities for more mentors to become involved, the Friends First mentoring program launched a new mentoring program in partnership with St. Malachy School and TransUnion. It seemed a natural fit, as both the school and the company have been long-time partners of Mercy Home for Boys & Girls.

St. Malachy was looking for programming to help their fifth- through seventh-grade girls work on their self-esteem and peer relationships, and TransUnion wanted to find a way to become involved with Mercy Home on a more consistent basis.

So, on a recent Tuesday, an all-girls mentoring program began.

The program will occur every other Tuesday through the academic year. The girls and mentors will spend time together focusing on self-image and self-esteem. Additionally, they will work to build positive peer relationships through one-on-one and group mentoring. The program will have 11 mentoring matches.

The recent launch included the girls presenting their mentors with puzzles about themselves. Each piece of the puzzle indicated their favorite color or food, along with things like their favorite activities. The matches then brainstormed what they would like the program to be by cutting images from magazines and creating a presentation for the girls to give to the group. The marketing associates at TransUnion will then use the images the girls selected to propose some group names to be voted on at a later session.

A huge thank you to our friends at TransUnion for their hard work to get this program up and running and to our entire Friends First team for their dedication to making a difference in the lives of more young people!