By Shirley M. Payne
Throughout Connecticut, businesses, colleges and other civic-minded organizations mentor state students. They do so not only because students benefit from the one-on-one attention they receive, but also because helping young people gain confidence and build academic achievements is good for everyone.
In business, we like to talk about the multiplier effect of economic investment that creates other businesses and additional jobs outside our own companies. Northeast Utilities believes mentoring students has a similar multiplier effect on the human experience because everybody gains from this work.
Mentoring provides a direct link to students, but think of the benefits to society when mentors, teachers, classmates, parents and younger brothers and sisters also profit from the experience. That process builds a foundation for a better community and a more sound society.
Mentoring certainly is worthwhile for NU. As a utility company, our success is dependent on the vitality of the communities we serve. A healthy, vibrant community leads to healthy, vibrant businesses.
Mentoring, then, is a reinvestment in our home communities.
NU believes so strongly in mentoring that for 25 years, our employees have been committed to aiding students at the John A. Langford School in East Hartford and, more recently, at the Richard J. Kinsella Magnet School for the Arts in Hartford. NU employees have supported literacy efforts in Connecticut, helped with Junior Achievement programs and coordinated teams in robotics science competition, too. Late last summer, our employees spent a weekend applying software and installing hardware to computers at the Academy of Engineering and Green Technology at Hartford Public High School.
Mentors provide students with the adult role models who can unlock a young person’s potential. Students begin to improve their academic work, certainly, and they also start to appreciate the value of a good education. They begin to think about future goals. They learn specifically that a successful education is the key to better opportunities that will influence what their jobs will be, improve their incomes and provide social benefits that will reverberate throughout their adult lives.
The process also teaches young people how to be better citizens who can contribute to the well-being not only of their generation but also of generations to come. Young people build self-esteem as they gain confidence from adults who encourage them to stretch beyond traditional expectations and meet higher goals.
Interacting with adults who are generous with their time, patience and kindness aids students in developing stronger character. Mentoring also teaches students new ideas and helps them mature.
One-on-one attention brings students and mentors together so that they build relationships that benefit not merely themselves as participants but the wider community, too.
Mentoring strengthens the confidence of students as well as that of mentors, teachers and parents. It sets a positive tone for the life’s work of the community by spreading optimism and good will.
Students learn academic lessons. But they also come to understand the broader lessons of life, such as respect for other human beings, for the physical environment in which we live and for hard work.
Mentors benefit as individuals because, in teaching and explaining concepts to young people, the mentors must learn even more about their fields of expertise so that they can better explain topics to their students. Mentoring thus becomes a vehicle for the personal and professional growth of the mentors and for their employers who develop a richer, more diverse workforce.
The tutors gain an understanding of the difficult challenges that face students who have not yet achieved up to their potential and have had to overcome adversity all along the way in their young lives. In building confidence, mentors unlock one of the secrets to a successful life.
At NU, we see a variety of benefits for every person the mentoring programs touch. Mentors’ interaction with students helps the young people start planning their lives, resilient in the fact that they have more abilities, interests and potential than they otherwise had imagined.
Finding the key to free a young person’s spirit can be tricky business.
But each new mentoring effort that establishes a one-on-one relationship holds the potential for creating genuine trust. And from that trust emerges the student’s confidence to try new ideas and activities and to appreciate how full and wonderful life can be.
Mentoring is satisfying and rewarding work. Considering the current financial and other challenges that our school systems are facing, this would be the perfect time for NU, our employees and other companies to step up their mentoring programs.
Shirley M. Payne is president and executive director of the Northeast Utilities Foundation, and vice president for shared services at Northeast Utilities, parent company of Connecticut Light & Power Co. and Yankee Gas.
