Matilda Cuomo - The Person Who Changed My Life: Prominent People Recall Their Mentors

To my husband, Mario, and our children and grandchildren.

May you always have faith, hope, and love.

May your light shine all the days of your lives.

Kids dont need you to be superman. They just need you to be there. They need you to be someone they can count on. Its about building that trust. Its about providing comfort and stability in a world that often lacks both. And its about showing young people that the world is filled with opportunities, and then helping them seize those opportunities.

First Lady Michelle Obama,

National Mentoring Summit, January 2011

I first met Matilda Raffa Cuomo when our husbands served as governors. I remember how much I immediately liked her and how passionately she talked about the importance of mentoring in the lives of our young people. She explained her efforts in New York to launch the nations first statewide, one-to-one mentoring program. Over the years, at events at the White House or in New York, Matilda and I have continued our conversations about what mentoring has meant in our own lives and our common commitment to open up those same opportunities to all children.

I am grateful to so many peopleteachers, coaches, neighborswho encouraged, supported, and challenged me while I was growing up. I will always be thankful to Rev. Donald James, my churchs youth minister in Park Ridge, Illinois, who did so much to open a wider world to me and my friends. He arranged for our church youth group to worship and participate in service projects together with black and Hispanic teenagers in Chicago. He exposed us to modern art and poetry, from Picasso to e. e. cummings, long before school did. And in 1961 he took a group of us to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak. As I listened to Dr. Kings powerful words about nonviolence and the right of all Americans to live in dignity, I knew my world would never be the same.

Adults can have mentors, too. I had one after I met Marian Wright Edelman during my first year of Yale Law School. Marian, a civil rights lawyer and childrens advocate, inspired my own commitment to justice. Marian also knows about mentoring. As she writes about growing up in South Carolina before the civil rights era, she describes how she and her sisters were wrapped up and rocked in the cradle of faith, song, prayer, ritual, and worship, which immunized our spirits against some of the meanness and unfairness of our segregated South. I have felt that cloak of protection working in my own life. And I have seen how parents, church leaders, teachers, and other caring adults have sustained and supported young people in times of sorrow, pain, or confusion.

This book is filled with stories of people who were lucky enough to be embraced by that same loving web of relationships, and who, as a result, found the strength and direction to overcome barriers to success and freedom. Their stories underscore what we know by experience to be truethat even one caring adult in the life of a young person can make all the difference in the world, opening up opportunities that may have seemed unimaginable.

Every child needs a champion. Yet, for too many of Americas children today, there are no champions; there are no mentors. Some young people may need tutoring help in school so they can feel the satisfaction of reading a good book and being promoted to the next class. Others may need coaching in a sport so they can experience what it is like to be engaged in team effort. Many children thrive when they are given the opportunity to contribute, whether in building a home for a homeless person or tutoring a young sibling or classmate. Every young person needs someone to say, I believe in you.

Ive seen the power of mentoring firsthand. For example, I have visited the Harriet Tubman School in Harlem, New York, where parents and members of the community were coming together to create after-school programs that are currently boosting students grades and self-confidence. I have seen the excitement in the eyes of young inner-city children in Washington, DC, as they looked forward to meeting with volunteers from AmeriCorps, who were helping them with their reading skills. And I have seen what can happen when artists, poets, and musicians unleash the creative imaginations of young people, turning a dreary classroom into a set for a play or a place to explore the wonders of a flute or a paintbrush.

Mentoring. Tutoring. After-school programs. There are many opportunities for caring, responsible adults to become involved in the lives of our children. At a time when there seems to be so little that people agree on, this is one mission worthy of bipartisan, broad-based support. It is not only the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do. We know from countless studies that there are direct links between mentoring and tutoring programs and higher academic achievement, lower dropout rates, fewer teen pregnancies, and safer communities.

I hope this book will inspire more people to become involved in the life of a young person, because we all have a critical role to play. I also hope it will persuade governors and legislators to invest more of their budgets in mentoring and other support programs for our young people. I was pleased that my husband, while president, signed into law the GEAR UP program, which has encouraged middle schoolers in some of our poorest neighborhoods to begin thinking about going to college and has recruited mentors to help them make that dream a reality. The government clearly has a role to play. But in the end, it is up to each and every one of us to become involved in a childs life.

There are many successful mentoring programs across the country that are making a difference in the lives of young people, thanks to leaders like Matilda Cuomo. Whether people enlist in a local mentoring program, informally start helping a child, or participate in national efforts like Mentoring USA, I Have a Dream programs, or the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, the result is the same. By giving one-to-one attention to a troubled child, offering hope where there is only despair, or opening doors that were once shut, we can change lives. These are some of the best investments we can make to ensure that children not only survive but thrive in todays world.

For America to succeed in the twenty-first century everyone deserves a good education, and everyone should have the opportunity to go to college. We cannot afford to let only the privileged have those chances and dream those dreams. As a nation we must ensure that all children, regardless of their race, neighborhood, or family income, have the opportunity to fulfill their God-given potential and the skills they need to grow and flourish. Let us teach our children that they can go as far as their dreams and abilities will take them. Let us stand beside them, believe in them, and help guide them, until they get there.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

T oday mentoring is recognized as one of our most effective social programs, one which encourages and facilitates the education and the self-confidence of the mentee. At a mentoring summit in January 2011, President Obama, referring to the heightened need for volunteers to mentor at-risk children, issued a call to action: Academic achievement and social success through mentoring. I heartily endorse the presidents initiative. He has given us a great national challengewe want to connect mentors with young people in one hundred and seventy communities that comprise the two thousand lowest-performing schools in the United States. This third edition of