Throughout October, the SMILES mentoring program conducted an intensive awareness and mentor recruiting campaign aptly dubbed “600 SMILES”. Readers learned first-hand what it is like to be a mentor from local citizens already serving in the program.  A few students also shared their thoughts on having a SMILES mentor in their lives.  Ultimately, the goal was to prompt you - the readers - to pick up your phone and call the SMILES office and volunteer to become a SMILES mentor and begin spending time with a student in a New Bedford public school.

“The goal of every SMILES mentor is to help their student “mentee” achieve his or her personal and educational potential”, said the program’s executive director, Jim Mathes. “When 600 people sign up and begin spending time with these kids, it will be a very powerful statement about our community.”

In its first year of operation as a new non-profit, SMILES grew its pilot program to more than 200 mentors in New Bedford. But the growing program still hasn’t scratched the surface of the deep need for meaningful adult relationships in the lives of hundreds of local students.

If 600 SMILES works, the results should reach much further than the classroom. Students who are enthusiastic about school are less likely to get caught up in the wrong crowd or end up a crime victim, said New Bedford Police Chief Ron Teachman, a SMILES mentor at Keith Middle School. “We need more mentors…we need this thing to grow. We cannot overestimate the value of these programs,” Teachman said. “Keeping (students) in school on a positive career path means they are less likely to step out and join a gang,  get involved with drugs, respond to peer pressure or get involved in delinquent activities. To gain self assurance and the personal skills they need to succeed, that’ s going to happen in school, not on the streets.”

The program’s benefits go both ways, the chief said, mentioning how much fun he had during the previous school year with his mentee. “For all the people who want to stop the violence and invest in their city, I think they’re going to see this has more value than any check they can write. You get as much or more out of it than you put into it. There are tangible results,” Teachman said.

SMILES matches volunteer adult mentors with elementary, middle and high school students in the New Bedford public school system as a strategy to help these students succeed. Mentors typically spend an hour a week with their student in a group setting at school. Friendships develop, but more importantly, kids matched with a mentor usually wind up graduating. Mathes added that “mentoring has a way of changing one’s perspective in a very healthy way, and that can only be good for our schools and our community. When you mentor you come away with a much better understanding of New Bedford’s social and educational issues.”

Mathes cites some arresting figures illustrating the need for grassroots intervention in local schools. New Bedford’s graduation rate stands at 57.4 percent, compared to a 79.9 percent state average and a national average of 73.9 percent. According to information gleaned from state and federal demographic reports, about 40 percent of the city’s residents lack a high school diploma, dwarfing the state average of 15 percent of people without a high school education. Education deficiencies further pervade New Bedford by contributing to a poverty level three times the state average and alarming unemployment and crime rates.

“We are simply host to too many undereducated people”, said Mathes. “The only way that will ever change is if we mount our own successful community efforts.  No one is going to come from Boston, Washington or anywhere else to solve this problem for us.”

To sign up and become a mentor, call SMILES at 508-999-9300, or send an email to jmathes@smilesmentoring.org.