Blog #11......R & R

The NGO that I chose to blog about isn't widely known. It's an orginization that I hold very dear to me because I personally helped create it. When I was 16 my first "real" job was a teachers assistant in a local day care facility. Our day care was different because it's schedules and structure was designed for children who have been removed from their original homes and placed in government care such as foster homes. After working there for a period of time some of the ladies and myself began to notice a pattern within the children. We were constantly dealing with disruptive children and we noticed that they were acting out for attention. They didn't care whether the attention they recieved was negative of positive they were just desperate for it. So we got together and devised a plan. We took the facilities most problimatic children and assigned them to a specific worker. The workers were instructed to spend quality time with their child and give them just a little extra attention whenever the scheduled allowed. Now this may seem unfair to the rest of the children but at this point our plan was only in the testing phase. We believed that if we gave these children positive encouragement and positive attentive role models then maybe , just maybe , their behavior would improve. And lucky for us, we were right. So we took our idea to the community and asked for their help. After several weeks and tons of help and support form our community we were able to establish R&R. R&R stands for Real Relationships and is designed similar to the big brother program. The team is completely mad up of volenteers from our community and surrounding towns. R&R is funded through donations, sponsers, and pledges.Membership in R&R is completely free and mentors will even pick the children up for their play dates and drop themn off. We, as mentors, strive to engourage the children to strive for something and to believe in themselves. We are dedicated to improving self esteem, helping the children realize the importance of education, and about all promote positive thinking. Lots of thought and consideration goes into the process of selecting children for specific mentors. We try to assign children to a type a mentor that they don't really have in their lives. For example, we know that a child grew up in a broken household with a single mother parent we try to assign a mentor that is male and can demonstrate how positive men live. We strive to assign mentors that can provide for the children whatever it is that they are lacking in their lives. The originization is extremely important because in todays society children are forced to grow up way to early and are losing their oppertunity to just be kids. Throughout the last 3 years we have noticed that the majority of the time, children tend to respond and relate better with a mentor of their gender. having a positive role model that is similar to them helps the children learn how positive members of our community function in thier day to day lives. Our mentors are friends. They play with their kids, attend their school events, take them fishing, ect. They basically take these children as their own and help them deal with whatever life throws at them in the most constructive way.