LI Leaders Convene For Crucial Discussions on NY's At-Risk Youth

Overcoming gang influence, bullying prevention, supporting undocumented children, and suicide prevention. These were the critical issues addressed today at Mentor New York’s 14th Annual Mentoring Matters Conference held on the LIU Post campus in Brookville and supported by AT&T. Long Island leaders Laura Curran, Nassau County Executive; Monica Martinez, Suffolk County Legislator and Chair of the Public Safety Committee; and Madeline Singas, Nassau County District Attorney, helped lead discussions at this year’s conference attended by hundreds of advocates for Long Island’s youth including concerned educators, elected officials, mentoring program organizers, mentors and mentees.

“Now, more than any other time in recent years, communities and leaders must come together to develop effective and impactful programs to support our at-risk youth. Providing a nurturing environment to children through winning mentoring programs, is proven to make a measured difference in a child’s success,” asserts Jean Lahage Cohen, Executive Director, Mentor New York. For 25 years, Mentor New York, a leading non-profit organization that provides professional and technical assistance to mentoring programs throughout New York State, has worked to provide life changing support, hope, encouragement and priceless guidance to hundreds of children by helping to introduce and develop impactful mentoring programs in communities and schools.

This year’s Mentoring Matters Conference included a Professional Development Day on March 15, 2018 where Laura Curran, a noted supporter of mentoring, was joined by lead mentors, educators and program organizers in her keynote discussion about the impact mentoring has on transforming the life of a child. Curran also spoke about her belief in policy and community action to propel positive change in LI’s communities. The Professional Development Day also included a panel of gang prevention experts who examined the challenges and opportunities communities face to effectively address gang prevention and the targeting of the most vulnerable population, children.

A Youth Day was held on March 16, 2018, where 250 students from across Long Island, the Bronx and Queens toured the LIU Post campus to engage their interest in attending college. Budgeting and empowerment workshops also were held where students learned about entrepreneurship, public speaking and finding their inner strength.

Schools that attended the March 16 conference included South Huntington’s Birchwood Intermediate School, Maplewood Intermediate School, Silas Wood Sixth Grade Center and Stimson Middle School. Bronx-based the Girl’s Circle, a mentoring program, also attended, as well as the Longwood Middle School STEM program for Girls, Queens Q253, Hempstead’s Alverta B. Schultz Middle School and the College Pioneers Mentoring Program from Port Washington.

“Mentor New York works with many businesses, including AT&T, which greatly supports the process of mentoring, including the unquestionable impact it has on children’s lives. We would like to thank AT&T for their unwavering support of our mission and for helping to make this year’s conference possible,” continued Cohen. “We are also equally grateful to LIU Post for working with us yearly to make their campus and student leaders available for this important conference.”

“AT&T is committed to supporting mentoring for our nation’s youth through our national ASPIRE program because we believe that a mentor in a young person’s life significantly improves their potential for success,” said Marissa Shorenstein, President, Northeast Region, AT&T. “We are once again proud to support the Mentoring Matters annual conference this year because it provides a forum to discuss important topics facing the Long Island community and aligns with our own companywide initiative to provide students with the resources they need to succeed.”

AT&T has contributed $125,000 over five years to support MNY’s mentoring training programs across Long Island.

AT&T’s ongoing support of this impactful program is part of the company’s legacy of working with educational programs in New York through AT&T Aspire, the company’s signature $400 million philanthropic initiative that drives innovation in education by bringing diverse resources to bear on the issue including funding, technology, employee volunteerism and mentoring.

Aspire is one of the nation’s largest corporate commitments focused on school success and workforce readiness by creating new learning environments and educational delivery systems to help students succeed and prepare them to take on 21st century careers.

AT&T’s support for Mentoring Matters also grows out of the company’s commitment to mentoring and striving to collaborate with nonprofit education groups to connect students to mentors to provide opportunities to learn life skills and about diverse career paths, and ultimately understand how what mentees are learning today connects to their success tomorrow. AT&T’s dedicated employees have provided more than 1.5 million hours of mentoring to students across the country since 2012.

MNY was founded in 1993 as a not-for-profit whose mission is to bring caring adults together with children in need through safe, effective mentoring programs. Today, MNY conducts approximately 100 separate training seminars each year and trains approximately 1,500 new mentors annually. The organization creates approximately 75 new programs each year and supports approximately 600 existing programs serving more than 60,000 young people across New York State.

For more information, visit their website at www.mentornewyork.org.