March 23, 2007

CINCINNATI -- Tuesday evening, March 20th, saw the official launch of the Xavier University Community Mentoring Initiative. The kick-off event, which took place in the Schiff Conference Center in the Cintas Center, drew around 50-60 Xavier students eager to learn more about serving as a mentor to a local youth.

The initiative is the result of a partnership between the Cincinnati Youth Collaborative/Spark, represented by Khalil Osiris, and the Student-Athlete Services department at Xavier. Katie Wetterau, a cross country/track student-athlete at Xavier, got the program going by describing the idea behind the mentoring initiative and why Xavier students should be involved. She was followed by a few words from Kim Powers Hoyt, the Director of Student-Athlete Development. Clint Womack, also a cross country/track student-athlete shared his thoughts on the importance of mentoring, having experienced a mentoring relationship himself growing up. He talked about the power of a positive influence in the children's lives.

The highlight of the event followed as one of the youth involved with CYC took center stage to explain why he would appreciate the mentoring that a student from Xavier could provide. The young man of probably 12 or 13 was extremely well spoken and well received by the students in attendance.

The student was then followed by Khalil Osiris, who gave a very moving description of the goals of the program, his own experience with incarceration, and the importance of a program such as this. He appealed to the Xavier students by saying that his hope is to use this program at Xavier as a nationwide example of how students from "privileged backgrounds" really do care about issues going on in their communities and are eager to work towards improving these situations.

At the end of the event, students waited in line to fill out application forms to be a mentor and to get more information on the program. The goal is to continuously increase the number of involved mentors and to plan future activities to develop the relationships between mentor and mentee. If you are a student at Xavier and are interested in becoming a mentor or an adult who would like more information on the program, please contact Katie Wetterau at wetterauk@xavier.edu or Kim Powers Hoyt at powers@xavier.edu.