Tampa Bay Mentor Match is a community project of Learning is for Everyone *, a nonprofit education resource group working to empower families and learners through information and networking, on the web and off. We believe that by pooling our collective intelligences together, our kids potentially have access to some powerful learning resources we can't achieve alone. The opportunity to spend time with someone who shares a child's interests or career goals provides a more meaningful and enduring education that any classroom can provide.

Spending time with an expert mentor – once a week, once a month, for an occasional lunch out, or for a day with someone where he or she works – can:

1) Help guide interested kids in their learning and practice choices,
2) Connect them at the community level with respect to their interests,
3) Give them adult perspectives different from those in their own families;
4) And gives them a realistic, hands-on look at careers and interests.

Mentoring is also a more realistic way for experts to help – it's certainly less time consuming than teaching a class, it's more personal, and certainly potentially more meaningful and enduring. Just the fact that you're not working with a group, but more one on one makes it easier for kids to ask questions, and for experts to give more contextual replies and guidance.

So where are we going with all of this? We're going to YOU.

Whatever you do, you can rest assured that some child, somewhere in our community, is interested. If you're willing to act as a mentor to youth in our community – and you determine completely what that means with respect to your time and energy – all you have to do is complete a profile and read and sign a copy of the Tampa Bay Mentor Match Agreement.

And think about people you know – tap them for their willingness to mentor youth. For teens, that might include a day with the mentor, or regular visits at work, or possibly apprenticeships. For younger children, family will accompany them, or have mentors come to their homes. We build the MentorMatch directory. Families and Mentors decide all the comfort levels and parameters.

Mentors can also be part of our online school, University of LIFE :http://universityoflife.myicourse.com/ Anyone can be a "faculty" member of the University of LIFE. "Courses" can be long or short – a resource list; a couple pages of instructional material about something; a paper; a how-to. You name it, and we can do it. It's extraordinarily easy to use Myicourse, and it's completely free.

The thing is, we can do so much more than we're doing, and we can much better utilize the human capital we've got in great abundance here.

If you'd like to join us, drop us a line at info@learningis4everyone.org . After you complete the agreement and profile, you can join our Wiki, and you’re set to go.

Let's create a real learning community!

Terri Willingham
www.myli4e.org
info@learningis4everyone.org

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*Important Note: Learning is for Everyone acts only as directory clearinghouse. We believe reasonable adults and families can be trusted to make intelligent decisions about their community involvement and their interactions with one another.