At the first National Mentoring Summit held last month in Washington D.C., First Lady Michelle Obama announced the “Corporate Mentoring Challenge,” encouraging U.S. corporations and their employees to partner with mentoring organizations and become mentors.
The First Lady pointed out the many benefits of mentoring, including that mentored youth are much more likely to graduate, and less likely to partake in drug use, or get involved in gangs and violence. One of the most memorable moments of the First Lady’s speech came from the following part of her address:
“It’s about encouraging more caring adults to step up and make mentoring a part of their lives. And our thought is that if the President and the First Lady can mentor, shoot, everybody has got a little time.” (Entire transcript of the address)
We couldn’t agree more. Our corporate partnerships, like the one we have with E*Trade Financial, allows schools in tough financial situations to get our online mentoring program. E*Trade employees also volunteer to become icouldbe.org mentors – in fact, they’ve dedicated nearly 40,000 hours mentoring students!
We’re echoing the First Lady’s call-to-action, and would like to help spread the word to corporations and businesses all over the U.S. If you know of a business, or are part of business, that could engage in a mentoring program, let them know about this challenge! And if you’d like to learn a little more about the benefits of being a corporate partner with icouldbe, here is some more information.
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