Impact 2009 by The MENTOR Network

impact A R e p o r t o f T h e M E N TO R N e t w o r k C h a r i ta b le Fo u n d a t i o n 2 0 0 7 - 2 0 0 8 Impact [n. im-pakt; v. im-pakt] – noun 1. forceful contact; collision. 2. influence; effect. – verb 1. to strike forcefully. 2. influence; alter. Used as a noun or a verb, the word impact captures The MENTOR Network Charitable Foundation’s wide-ranging activities on behalf of individuals, communities and the field of human services. These activities are forceful expressions of The MENTOR Network’s commitment to finding new solutions and creative ideas for enhancing the lives of those we serve. And they produce forceful results: Picture athletes with intellectual disabilities going for the gold at the Special Olympics; hear the voices of teen girls broadcasting their hopes and dreams across urban airwaves, as they develop their own leadership skills; and imagine the relief that comes from knowing safe, accessible and affordable housing is within the reach of people with physical challenges and brain injuries. And there is so much more. The Foundation’s impact is broad and deep because it encourages innovation and offers inspiration across the human services spectrum – and around the country. Funding is distributed through three primary grant programs that reflect our priorities and beliefs: •

We believe in the power of individual employees to transform their neighborhoods and hometowns. So we encourage their volunteer spirit through the Community Champions program.

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We believe in the power of those we serve to shape their own destinies, despite any challenges or adversity they face. So we offer support through the Stepping Stones Fund.

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We believe in the power of organizations to enhance lives through new ideas and outside-the-box thinking. So innovation is our litmus test when we choose our Community Partners.

Each program has its own selection committee made up of Network employees representing every corner and level of the organization. In addition to the grant programs, the Foundation plays an important leadership role within The MENTOR Network, identifying and creating opportunities for employees to give of themselves throughout the year. Our committed and talented workforce has spent winter evenings in shelters offering food and good cheer. They’ve raised funds through a spring basketball tournament. And they’ve helped kids get ready to learn with school supplies and backpack drives.

Our Community Partners are change agents within human services that are either delivering innovative care or developing new ideas and models for doing so. They are results oriented, leveraging resources and knowledge to positively impact individuals and communities and transform society’s vision of and approach to its most vulnerable members. The Stepping Stones Fund helps those we serve through grants for job training and readiness activities, vocational and higher education, and other programs that lead to self-sufficiency and independence. Whether they are transitioning out of the foster care system, graduating from one of our therapeutic day schools or receiving other services, many young people served by The Network lack the resources and support necessary to build productive, fulfilling lives. Because community service is The Network’s way of life, the Foundation created the Community Champions program to recognize our employees who devote extraordinary amounts of time and energy to local charities. Champions receive recognition throughout The Network, and their chosen nonprofit receives a gift of $500.00.

In just two short years, The MENTOR Network Charitable Foundation has become a source of inspiration and pride for our employees. Most importantly, though, it has become an agent of change within our communities, and a beacon of hope and inspiration for those we serve. That’s impact!

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INNOVATION

our mission

Innovating through crisis: The MENTOR Leadership Fellows Program The developmental disabilities field is facing a crisis. Its leadership is retiring. The ranks of the next generation are thin. Seeing this trend, the Foundation created The MENTOR Leadership Fellows Program, which enables the field’s emerging leaders to attend a week-long intensive leadership institute organized by the National Leadership Consortium on Developmental Disabilities. The institute takes place at the University of Delaware, and offers participants the chance to learn from national experts, develop leadership and management skills and expand their network of professional contacts. In 2008, the Foundation funded three classes of fellows. They represented private, public and non-profit organizations throughout the United States and one in Jamaica. The Foundation funds the full tuition, travel costs and lodging for each class of fellows.

The MENTOR Network Charitable Foundation works to build on The Network’s innovative approach to human services by seeking new solutions and creative ideas for enhancing the lives of persons with disabilities and youth and families facing emotional, behavioral and other challenges, and by expanding opportunity for those we serve. The Network was founded by social entrepreneurs who believed that healthy, vibrant communities are exactly the right environments in which people with a range of abilities thrive. The Foundation is The MENTOR Network’s commitment to nurturing the excellence and innovation that ensures such environments – for those we serve, for our employees and for society as a whole.

Community Partner and Community Champion Grant Recipients 2007-2008 • Abilities!

• Foothills Gateway

• Accessible Space

• Helping Hands Simian Aids for the Disabled

• Adoption & Foster Care Mentoring • American Cancer Society

• Hoops Sagrado

• American Red Cross Twin Cities Chapter

• Indian Mobile Mission • Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

• Best Buddies of MA

• Lincoln Community Center

• Beulah Missionary Baptist Church

• Lovelane Special Needs Horseback Riding

“These programs are vital to cultivating the next generation of leaders in a complex and ever-changing field,” said Dwight Robson, Vice President of The Network’s Public Strategy Group and Treasurer of the Foundation. “The Fellows Program builds on The Network’s own long history of innovation. It is our obligation to ensure that the people we serve always have the very best care.”

• Big Pocono Little League

Readings, assignments, and individual and group exercises are focused on three big-picture areas: determining and setting organizational direction; moving organizations to a highperformance model; and building a lifetime network of peers and leaders to sustain growth. History, communications, marketing, public policy, and management are some of the topics covered.

• Center for Disability Studies

“Thanks to this opportunity, I am on fire and ready to take on the world — beginning with my agency and me!” exclaimed Debbie Gibson Lee, Service and Program Director for Comprehensive Community Services in Live Oak, Florida. “Professionally, I feel that I will be a better leader.”

• Big Sister Association of Greater • Boston • Boston Children’s Chorus • Boston Debate League • Boston Partners in Education • The Brain Injury Association of MN • Camp Shriver • Center for Independence through • Cognitive Education • Chana • Cradles to Crayons • Cub Scouts Pack 456 • Daemen College Students Without Borders • Doc Wayne Athletic League • Encore Studio for the Performing Arts • Evergreen Presbyterian Ministries • Family Resources Center • First Baptist Church of Carter Lake

• Make Way for Books • Marlborough Hospital • MA Alliance for Teen Pregnancy • MA Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children • National Multiple Sclerosis Society • The Nebraska Jaycee Foundation • Off Broadway Musical Theatre • Partners for Youth with Disabilities • Places of Hope • Progressive 4H • Red Cross Grant Woods • ROCA • St. John the Baptist Catholic Church • St. Mary’s Women’s & Children’s Center • Special Olympics of MA • Special Olympics of MN • Tenacity • Vass Fire Department

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i nspir at i o n A winning summer with Special Olympics Picture a parade of athletes circling a stadium filled with waving flags and cheering fans. A torch is passed to one of the athletes. A cauldron is lit. Competition begins. The Olympics? You bet: The Special Olympics! This scene plays out across the country several times a year, as the nation’s finest athletes with intellectual disabilities test their skill and strength. They train for months and years. This summer, thanks to support from The MENTOR Network Charitable Foundation, athletes in Massachusetts and Minnesota competed in track & field, gymnastics, volleyball, power lifting, swimming, roller skating, tennis and other sports. The Minnesota games took place June 19-21 at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. More than 1,100 athletes were coached by 508 adults and assisted by 1,656 volunteers. “The MENTOR Network makes us more capable of providing quality competition experiences for our athletes,” said Chris Nelson, Corporate Relations Manager for Special Olympics Minnesota. “We are incredibly grateful.” In Massachusetts, 3,200 athletes and 587 coaches participated in the Bay State’s summer games at Harvard University June 14-15. More than 1,000 volunteers made the games a success. “Support from The MENTOR Network enables us to provide uniforms, equipment, transportation, facilities and lunches,” explained Nick Savarese, Director of Corporate Partnerships for Special Olympics Massachusetts. “We get almost no government funding.” In addition to offering financial support, staff from The Network’s offices in Edina, MN and Boston, MA volunteered their time at the games, managing game booths in each state’s Olympic Town. Based on the Olympic village concept, Olympic Town offers athletes, their coaches and families a respite from competition. Bean bag toss and football throw give all the athletes a chance to win. Free health screenings ensure they are getting the care they need. “It was a great experience,” said Nicole Ivey, assistant to the President for the Redwood Operating Group, who volunteered at an Olympic Town booth at the Minnesota games. “The Network’s goal is to help people maximize their potential and independence to the fullest extent possible. Special Olympics is our mission in action.”

The Foundation has awarded grants, hosted a backpack drive, and sponsored employee volunteer outings to Quincy. MA-based Cradles to Crayons, a nonprofit organization that provides children living in low-income and homeless situations with the items they need to feel safe, warm, valued and ready to learn.

“We are honored to work with such a generous and engaged partner as The MENTOR Network Charitable Foundation. The financial and volunteer commitment of The MENTOR Network has allowed us to help thousands of local children receive the everyday essentials they need to thrive. We look forward to our continued partnership to help achieve our shared vision of positively impacting the welfare of children.” —Lynn Margherio, Founder & CEO of Cradles to Crayons

Grant Guidelines and Application Process Grant applications are available online at www.thementornetwork.com/foundation. Community Champion applications are accepted on a rolling basis and winners are announced quarterly. Stepping Stones applications are accepted and reviewed on a rolling basis. Community Champion applications are announced quarterly. The deadlines for submitting grant requests for FY09 are as follows: Fiscal Year 2009 (October 1, 2008 to September 30, 2009) Q1: December 15, 2008 Q2: March 15, 2009 Q3: June 15, 2009 Q4: September 15, 2009 Organizations are eligible to re-apply for funding every twelve months from the date of the initial grant. Successful re-submissions will demonstrate measurable progress and outcomes from the previous funding cycle.

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i llumi n at i o n Hoops Sagrado: Opening up the world through basketball “The invention of basketball wasn’t an accident,” explained James Naismith, who founded the sport in 1891. “It was developed to meet a need.” More than a century later, the sport is still meeting needs, thanks to an organization aptly named Hoops Sagrado, Spanish for Sacred Hoops.

Congratulations to all of our Community Champions! Because community service is The Network’s way of life, the Foundation created the Community Champions program to recognize our employees who devote extraordinary amounts of time and energy to local charities. Champions receive recognition throughout The Network, and their chosen nonprofit receives a gift of $500.00.

presented to

Kristin Fensterbusch

For your belief in the importance of helping others and extensive history of volunteer work; for using your education and skills to offer hope and healing to those who are less fortunate; and for your continued commitment to finding new ways to reach out to help others in your own community and abroad The MENTOR Network Charitable Foundation is proud to name you our Community Champion for June 2008 With admiration and gratitude,

2007

Hoops Sagrado is a Washington, DC-based youth leadership and development nonprofit supported by the Foundation. It creates connections between at-risk youth from the D.C.-area and their Mayan indigenous peers in the highlands of Guatemala. For a month each summer, 15 to 20 young people, ranging in age from 14 to 19, travel to Guatemala to learn another language and culture, teach their peers basketball skills, develop their sense of self, and gain a new perspective on life. Using the game of basketball as the common thread, the D.C. youth volunteers and their Guatemalan counterparts share their love of the game. At the same time, the D.C youth learn how to communicate with, understand, and appreciate another way of life, which while different, shares many of the same challenges they face at home — discrimination, poverty, broken homes, lack of opportunities and social marginalization. “The change that an overseas trip means to a child’s life is unparalleled,” explained Bryan Weaver, Founder and Executive Director of Hoops Sagrado. “They see that there is a world outside their own neighborhood.”

January: Luis Montemayor February: Rafael Genao, Jr. March: Neal Gallagher April: Bernice Elliot May: Michelle Kersten June: Jeanne Donahue

2008 January: Sondra Willner February: Frank Rothell March: Vickie Gangness April: David Wilson May: Carol O’Hara June: Kristin Fensterbusch

—Bryan Weaver, Founder & Executive Director of Hoops Sagrado

During their stay, they also repair and construct local basketball courts and plazas; create murals in area schools; play in basketball tournaments against Guatemalan teams; participate in a book club; visit the home of a local weaver and craftsman where they make their first tortillas and learn about the process of weaving and blanket making; and visit the world-famous ruins left by the ancient Mayan civilization.

Many of the D.C.-area youth volunteers help raise money for the scholarships when they return from Guatamala. “It is a humbling experience for them,” said Weaver of the youth volunteers’ fundraising efforts. “Through cookie and t-shirt sales, by selling bracelets they bring back from Guatamala, they give wings to their personal dreams of making the world a better place.”

July: Robert Adam August: Dione Glenn September: Ross Mason October: Eunice Keino November: Taryn Ranoa

“The change that an overseas trip means to a child’s life is unparalleled. They see that there is a world outside their own neighborhood.”

The youth volunteers and counselors spend five hours each morning in Spanish immersion lessons. After a noontime meal with their Guatemalan host families, the youth volunteers run basketball clinics in Spanish and English for young children in the villages.

In addition to the cultural exchange program, Hoops Sagrado funds nearly 100 scholarships for indigenous Mayan teenagers to pursue their education in Guatemala. The organization contributes tuition fees, uniforms, housing, food, and all other expenses incurred during their time in school.

July: Brenda Long August: NeCole Bartlett September: Mark Turbes October: Elaine Hawkins November: Patricia Lahman December: Corinne Sosin

313 Congress Street, Fifth Floor Boston, Massachusetts 02210 617.790.4800 foundation@thementornetwork.com www.thementornetwork.com/foundation Board of Directors Gregory Torres, Chair Tripp Jones, President Linda DeRenzo Juliette Fay Denis Holler Edward Murphy Dwight Robson Community Champions Committee Dave Davenport Maria McGee Sue Ortner

Community Partners Committee Neil Brendmoen Jan Blosser David Doth Jane Ketcham Juli Knox Robin Ray Stepping Stones Committee Gary Jeter Patti Maguire Lynn Morton-Epps Kate Novak Vivianne Ngwa