Your company can play a vital role in our community by recruiting mentors from your workforce. Currently, there are more than 600 young people in Fairfax County "waiting" to receive a mentor, and the "waiting list" is growing. If you are in position to help your company initiate, or expand, its mentoring efforts, you will be "making a difference," one that impacts our entire community.

Starting a corporate mentoring program involves just three basic steps:

Step 1.
 Selecting a mentor "coordinator" within your company;

Step 2.
Communicating with your employees - both about the "need" for mentoring in Fairfax County, and the opportunities that exist; and

Step 3.
 Recruiting employees to become mentors.

Please know that the Fairfax Mentoring Partnership, and the more than 20 affiliated mentoring County programs, will support you every step of the way. We'll handle the screening, the training and the matching. We ask only that you help us locate individuals within your company that have both the time and inclination to "make a difference."

Beyond recruiting, there are a host of ways that corporations can promote mentoring, including:

·
 Asking your company's board members to support quality mentoring programs and organizations that sponsor them;  
·
 Changing corporate personnel policies and practices to facilitate support for and involvement in mentoring;
·
 Encouraging managers and employees to become mentors; and
·
 Devoting your company's special expertise (training, marketing, advertising, finance, human resources, legal, program management, etc.) to help local mentoring programs operate more efficiently and cost effectively.

If you wish to explore starting a community mentoring program, please contact Kristen Brennan, Program Coordinator, at kristen.brennan@fairfaxcounty.gov or 703-324-5701.

And thank you. Your munificence is greatly appreciated.