Aiming for Success

My dad used to tell me, “If you don’t know what you’re aiming at, you’ll hit it every time.”

Many of you have asked what the aim of the mentoring program is.  We have a well established vision of long-term community transformation through spiritual revitalization, and we could articulate goals about lowering drop out rates and helping students make better grades. We knew that we had to instruct our kids on how to make wise choices and growing in righteousness, but the specific target was still fuzzy. It was all a bit too abstract to give concrete discussion items.

So as a staff we started to try and more clearly focus the aim our mentoring program—to create a portrait, if you will--for the students we work with and their mentors. Here is what we came up with:

We desire every student to have an authentic, growing relationship with Jesus Christ that motivates them to have:

1. A commitment to graduate from high school with a plan for continuing education.
2. A commitment to sexual purity evidenced by waiting to have babies until after marriage.
3. A “future story” that recognizes the students unique giftedness and includes giving back to the community.

The first two points, high school dropouts and fatherlessness, are widely known to be two of the largest contributors to ongoing, generational poverty. If we can make strides in helping our kids live up to their god-given potential in education and stress the wisdom of waiting to have babies within the confines of marriage the young people will be well down the road to a future of success.

The last point, having a future story, is an insight gained from Ruby Payne and her book Bridges Out of Poverty. In it, Dr. Payne stresses the importance of having a vision of the future and a plan to get there. However, as she points out, a person living in poverty tends to be oriented to the present, living in “survival” mode, struggling to make it day-to-day. This is one of the primary ways we can help our students, by helping them look down the road and form a plan for the future. With a plan we also need to help provide resources and support to implement the plan.

And of course, as we have said from day one, our Vision Kids are the future leaders of the community. We want then to succeed in school and life and them come and help another student do the same. Hopefully many will choose to make a positive difference in West Dallas.

Lastly, remember we have many years with our students. Not every moment has to be spent driving one of these points home. There will be hundreds of opportunities over the years to talk about these issues in context. We will also orient our programming to help provide opportunities to dialog about these issues as well.

Thanks for all you do. I have said it many times over, but it bears repeating again. We cannot do the job we have been called to without you. Mentors are at the heart of our strategy. I pray that God will continue to do a work in your life as you invest into a child’s life.