SOMEONE TO LOOK UP TO

WITH GROWING NUMBERS OF CHILDREN BEING RAISED BY SINGLE PARENTS, MENTORS ARE GAINING IMPORTANCE

By Linda Matchan, Globe Staff

WEDNESDAY, June 7, 1995

It is a recent Thursday, and two formidable-looking men from the IRS have just arrived at the Mather elementary school in Dorchester.

They are escorted upstairs, where they find the people they have come to see. They open their briefcases.

One pulls out a Red Sox program. The other proceeds to open a game of Connect Four, a version of Tic Tac Toe.

And, as they do every week, Peter Garcia, a taxpayer service specialist, and Anthony Moore, a revenue agent, spend the next hour talking sports, practicing spelling and playing board games with two boys named Randy and Jamal.

Garcia and Moore are mentors, two of thousands in the Boston area who volunteer to be role models for young people considered by their teachers to be in serious need of a meaningful relationship with a caring adult.

At a time when single parenting is on the rise, when crime and drug use are rampant, when parents are overwhelmed and distracted by economic issues, when the term ''disadvantaged'' describes thousands of Massachusetts youngsters, mentoring is rapidly becoming one ''window of hope,'' in the words of one volunteer, for the nation's troubled youth.

Locally and nationally, mentoring programs are being created at such a rate that the phenomenon has been likened to a ''movement.'' In Kansas City, Mo., for example, community leaders have initiated ''YouthFriends,'' -- an ambitious plan to recruit no fewer than 30,000 mentors in three years.

Mentoring, of course, is not a new concept; formal mentoring programs have been around at least as long as the 93-year-old Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America.

But the need for mentoring has taken on new significance in the last few years, as evidence grows of an ever-widening gulf between what today's children need in family and social supports, and what they are able to get in a time of government cutbacks.

The number of guidance counselors in Boston public schools, for example, has been reduced from 108 to 74 in the last 10 years. There is currently only a single guidance counselor in all 79 of the city's elementary schools.

But in Boston as in many other places, the agencies that provide mentors -- they include colleges, community groups, churches and synagogues, and companies and agencies like the IRS -- cannot nearly keep pace with the need to match children with responsible adults. There are 600 children waiting for a Big Brother in Boston right now, and the wait can be two years; nationally, there are 40,000 children on the waiting list.

''I'd say everyone in our school is in need of a mentor,'' said Janet Ferone, who runs the mentoring program at Roxbury's George A. Lewis Middle School. ''We need people desperately.''

Despite its wide appeal as a ''low-cost, high-yield solution that pays off,'' as former US Secretary of Labor Lynn Martin has called it, mentoring is not without its pitfalls. Some who work in the field say it can be difficult to get adults to mentor responsibly without a strong infrastructure in place to screen applicants and mediate if there are problems.

But those who work with children and mentors say that when the mentor is dedicated and realistic, the payoff can be enormous.

''What is most striking to me is that even though this person is only seeing the child one period a week, if that, you can see [the children's] faces light up so brilliantly when they get there,'' said Mather School principal Kim Marshall. ''There is a surprising, out-of-proportion affection and caring about those people . . . And I think it's because this is a special, one-on-one relationship, just for them. It means a whole lot to kids that someone would come all the way from Harvard, or the IRS, just to see them.''

In the program initiated by the IRS -- the so-called ''Interest = Dividends'' program -- Garcia, Moore and five of their colleagues spend a lunch hour every week at a Boston elementary school with children designated as their ''mentees.''

They might, on any given Thursday, shoot hoops, give pointers on homework, order pizza, or just help boost the kids' self-confidence, as Moore did on a recent Thursday.

''You started out good and kind of faded,'' Moore consoled Jamal, after testing him for the next day's spelling quiz. ''Just think how well you'd do if you studied, buddy.''

In another classroom, Peter Garcia, flipping through the Red Sox program, tries to explain the basics of baseball to Randy, a fourth-grader unfamiliar with it.

''Jim Rice, ever heard of him?'' he asks the boy, who is intently sipping his chocolate milk.

''No,'' he said quietly.

''He was really good when I was young. Now, this is the scoreboard. Ever seen one of these before?''

He shakes his head no.

''This is what happens. Let's say Jose Canseco is up, and he hits a home run. Which I hope he'll do a lot this year. This is how you score a game . . .''

To go behind the scenes in a mentor relationship is to understand both how difficult it can be to initiate, and how big the payoff can be in the end. Barbara Fay and Rakeea Gardner, mentor and student, remember distinctly their first impressions of each other when they met in 1992.

Fay says Rakeea was ''rude'' and ''hostile. She'd say crazy, stupid things.''

Rakeea thought Fay was ''goofy-looking. She was so hyper, it seemed like she was forcing an act.''

They met through a mentoring arrangement between Fay's employer, GTE, and Rakeea's school, the Lewis Middle School in Roxbury. It was not a match made in heaven. Fay, who is white, was a goal-oriented 50-ish administrator at GTE who lived in Cambridge and had a condo on the Cape, the mother of a son in his 20s.

Rakeea, who is black, was a belligerent, unmotivated 10-year-old who lived in a Dorchester tenement with her mother and three siblings, and ''was a terror in school,'' according to her mother. ''She was always getting suspended and kicked out.''

Fay said it took six months to get Rakeea to even communicate with her. Never a quitter, Fay persevered. She brought games and puzzles to Rakeea's school, took her to arcades, and went for walks.

''It was like she wouldn't go away, no matter what,'' Rakeea said.

Eventually, the relationship took off. They have gone camping together, to the Cape, and to Disney World, a trip paid for by Fay as a ''reward'' for Rakeea's improved behavior. ''I've tried to teach her that you need goals, and if you have goals and objectives in your life, it makes life more meaningful,'' said Fay.

Even though GTE temporarily discontinued its corporate mentoring program due to staff cutbacks that led to an increased workload, Fay continues to see Rakeea, and keep in regular contact by telephone. Both agree they are now very good friends. Rakeea acknowledges that ''I have calmed down a little,'' thanks to Fay's influence. ''She really is very precious,'' Fay says of Rakeea now.

Those who work with mentors say such stories are not uncommon. In a speech earlier this year to hundreds of city educators on the 10th anniversary of the Boston Plan for Excellence, Mather School principal Kim Marshall listed ''mentoring'' as one of the 10 essentials he would name (along with ''housing'' and ''hope'') for alleviating the crisis in so many Boston public school children's lives.

In an interview, Marshall said his speech was inspired by a sixth-grade boy named Eric whom he taught in 1971. The boy was bright, but got mixed up with drugs in elementary school and is now in the state prison in Walpole -- serving a four- to seven-year-sentence for domestic abuse.

Marshall believes that if the boy had had a mentor, he might not be behind bars right now. ''But there is still hope for him,'' said Marshall, who is trying now himself to make up for ''missed opportunitities'' by mentoring Eric, now 35: Marshall visits him occasionally, writes to him, and sends him books.

''He wrote to me the other day and said, ''if it wasn't for you, I'd have nothing to read now,'' said Marshall. ''I don't have any naive illusions that I'll pull off a Pygmalion with this kid. He's been a drug addict for years. But I'm trying. And he is certainly listening.''

Some mentors are quick to acknowledge that committing to mentoring was not easy in this age of jampacked schedules.

When someone asked Duane Jackson two years ago to do volunteer work for a mentoring group, he figured the last thing he needed was another social commitment.

He had two children, was running his own architectural firm, and was a Loeb fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He sat on the boards of a variety of organizations, including the Andover-Newton Theological School, Baybank Boston and the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership.

So when a friend asked him to join the leadership council of Greater Boston One to One, an organization that promotes mentoring programs, he took a lot of persuading.

But once he'd finally given in, ''I fell in love with it,'' Jackson said. ''I dropped some of the other boards. I found that it was one of the most meaningful experiences in my life.''

Over the last few years, a mentoring network has quietly been forming in the Boston area; there are now some 40 programs providing mentors to children and teen-agers, according to Linda Alioto-Robinson, executive director of Greater Boston One to One. There are even several organizations serving specialized populations of children. The Jewish Big Brother & Big Sister Association of Greater Boston provides Jewish mentors to Jewish children. ZUMIX, a music mentor program in East Boston, matches adult musicians with young people. Partners for Youth with Disabilities pairs youth who have sensory and learning disabilities with adults with similar disabilities. Yet those who study mentoring relationships caution that their influence, while significant, is limited.

''I think there is an overly-heroic idea of what mentors are,'' said Marc Freedman, author of ''The Kindness of Strangers,'' a book about mentoring and urban youth. ''We expect one person to magically swoop in and transform a kid. The thing about mentoring is that it seems so simple. But in reality, it's not nearly what kids need. They need more than one adult, one or two hours a week. They need something more akin to supplemental parenting.'' Freedman, who interviewed 300 mentors and children for his book, said it is not unheard of for mentors to simply give up on their charges -- a situation he likens to ''emotional abuse'' -- when they discover they don't have enough time for them, or find their problems too much to handle. Rakeea Gardner says this has happened to some of her own friends.

''None, so far, have lasted,'' she said. ''One mentor stopped calling and wouldn't return her messages.''

''If we are going to do this right, it's not a freebie,'' said Jean Rhodes, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois who is conducting studies of long-term mentoring relationships. ''We have to invest a tremendous amount of resources in training mentors, and in sustaining those relationships, because things inevitably go wrong.''

Still, if it can't turn every life around, mentoring has an important role to play in a world that too often is inhospitable to children, Freedman emphasizes.

''Mentors provide buffers against the world for children,'' Freedman said. ''They improve the quality of their daily lives. They have fun with them. They expose them to new opportunities. And that is not an insignificant thing.''

LOOKING FOR VOLUNTEERS

Dozens of agencies in Massachusetts need mentors and other volunteers willing to commit as little as an hour per week to help a young person. There is a huge need for mentors; for tutors for Boston public school children; for volunteers to read to children in a hospital waiting room, or to coach sports teams. Volunteers who apply to these agencies will be screened, and can expect to be asked about their employment, references and experience.

PERSONAL SUPPORT

Big Brother Association of Greater Boston Boston 617 542 9090
Volunteer Position: Big Brother to a boy without a father at home
Requirements: Responsible male at least 18; must attend a training workshop and agree to a Criminal Offender Records Investigation (CORI) check
Duties: Role model and mentor for boys 7 - 13 who have no father at hom
Time Commitment: An average of 3-5 hours/week for at least one year

Big Sister Association of Greater Boston Boston 617 236 8060
Volunteer Position: Big Sister
Requirements: Responsible female at least 20; must attend mentor training, agree to CORI check
Duties: Serve as role model for girls 7-15, or to 19 in the teen parenting program
Time Commitment: 4 hours per week for at least 18 months

Massachusetts Hospital School Canton 617-828-2440
Volunteer Position: ''Special Friend''
Duties: Regularly visit a disabled child
Requirements: Maturity
Time: 2 hours/week; Days; evenings or weekends, 1 year minimum (September - June).

Women in Community Service Boston 617 565 2180
Volunteer Position: Mentor
Duties: Work with women aged 16 to 24 on life planning, family stability, budget management, other
Requirements: Over 21, high school diploma
Time: 2 hours/week for one year

United South End Settlements/Harriet Tubman House South End 617-375-8106
Volunteer Position: Assistant Computer Teacher
Duties: Teaching weekly computer classes in computer resource center for preschool children aged 2-6
Requirements: Computer knowledge
Time: Days; 8am to 6pm M-F.

Women Incorporated Dorchester 617-442-6166
Volunteer Position: Child care assistant Duties: Assist with children ages 1 1/2 to 12 while parents attend meetings.
Requirements: Patient, willing to work under supervision.
Time: 2-3 hours/week; 3 month commitment; ongoing.

Jewish Big Brother and Big Sister Association Newton 617-965-7055
Volunteer Position: Big Brother/Sister
Duties: Be a friend and role model
Requirements: At least 21. Must be able to make 2 year commitment. Car required.
Time: 2-4 hours/week; Days; Evenings or weekends; 2 year minimum; ongoing.

EDUCATIONAL

Boston Partners in Education (BPE) Boston 617-451-6145
Volunteer Position: ''Listener-Mentor''
Duties: Tutoring Boston public school students
Requirements: Reliability
Time: 1-2 hours/week

BPE Volunteer Position No. 2: Reading Aloud Volunteer Duties: Visit an elementary school weekly to read aloud to students in grades K-3
Requirements: Reliability
Time: 1 to 2 hours/week; days; academic year; ongoing.

Tutoring Plus of Cambridge, Inc. Cambridge 617-547-7670
Volunteer Position: Tutor, mentor
Duties: Help students aged 6 to 18 on school work; be role model.
Time: academic year.

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