Seattle City Councilmember Bruce Harrell

January was National Mentoring Month and the Seattle City Council issued a proclamation on January 26, 2009, to that effect. Former Seattle City Councilmember, Tina Podlodowski, President and CEO of Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Puget Sound graciously accepted the proclamation. Also, during the weekend of January 31, 2009, I encourage you to join me at the Guiding Lights Weekend 2009 at the Seattle Center’s Pavilion. Guiding Lights is one of the best Seattle-based regional efforts to promote the incredible effects that mentoring has on young adults and our community. I’ve been invited to serve as a speaker at the Guiding Lights Awards Dinner.

I am asking that the City accept a major role in coordinating and promoting a city-wide effort to use mentoring as a strategic tool to increase the effectiveness of its young citizenry. This has not been done before. The purist may demand strict obedience to the City’s charter regarding the provision of essential services such as police, fire and roads. But even the purist cannot refute the business proposition that having more capable and productive young adults is cheaper than arresting, prosecuting, and criminalizing youth, as well as providing legal redress to the unfortunate victims.

I am in the process of developing a city-wide database for all organizations capable of providing competent mentoring services. I expect this database to be complete by the first quarter of 2009. This spring, I will convene several elected officials and organizational leaders in a one-day workshop where we will develop a plan to coordinate our efforts city-wide. I will explore how the City can best use its technology platform to complement some of the on-line mentoring services that exist today. The City will coordinate (not replicate) the fine organizations that exist with the intent that, through a combined and coordinated effort, we will recruit and encourage more adults willing to mentor and most importantly, more young adults mentored. The City will make sure that every mentor has the tools to succeed in their mentoring relationship. For the many organizations whose core mission is to mentor, they will know they have the Mayor, Council, and the City’s workforce behind them.

Mentoring is very personal to me. I grew up in the 1960s in the Central District of Seattle. It was at a time where many were prey to drug dealers, thugs, and mean-spirited adults. Movies popularized and glamorized the use of cocaine. I was fortunate to have individuals in my life like Steve Ewing, Lenzy Stuart, and Emil Wilson. They invested their time into a young boy who wanted answers to some of the most basic questions: “Who am I?” “What will it take to succeed?” I learned to play chess, use a bow and arrow, write better, read more effectively, and dream big! I learned these things because of the simple fact that a few men took the time to invest in me. Mentoring . . . It works!

Many of the young adults who are not reaching their potential have a destructive self-image and a limited self-awareness. They see no options for themselves. Some have, what Maslow would call a lack of “self-actualization” or the unwillingness to become everything that one is capable of becoming.

In 2009, the Seattle Mentoring movement will issue a “Save Our Seattle” proclamation and this will mark the defining beginning for the self-actualizing of Seattle’s youth. We will recruit athletes, artists, business leaders, teachers, doctors, police officers, fire fighters, and employ sports, music, dance, computers, chess and many other activities to save our city.

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