Mentors needed for GANAS Mentoring Program's ninth season

FALLBROOK – Mentoring brings lasting benefits to the volunteers and their community. Recognized and valued nationwide by many law enforcement agencies and community organizers as an effective crime prevention tool, mentoring helps steer children away from gangs, drugs, and crime.

These negative influences do exist in the Fallbrook area. Residents can overcome them and turn crime around, one child at a time, if enough people get involved and volunteer. Helping children by mentoring, seeing them redirected and blossom, can enrich one’s own personal life.

In 2005, the Fallbrook Citizens’ Crime Prevention Committee (FCCPC) created the GANAS Mentoring Program. GANAS stands for guide, advise, nurture, and support. The success of the GANAS Mentoring Program is dependent on the small sacrifice people make by becoming a volunteer mentor. GANAS reaches children, ages 9 to 14, in local apartment communities.

Often these children have no one who will listen to them. By volunteering to become a GANAS mentor, adults can choose to give a gift of personal time and commitment. This can reduce the allure of gang membership and propel these children to become leaders and mentors themselves. Mentoring gives these young people access to the support necessary for developing leadership and academic skills. It encourages them to make good choices and lead productive, happy, and healthy lives.

In many communities the mentoring approach has decreased crime in the neighborhoods where mentoring programs have been established. Mentoring is one of the most important community outreach programs. It creates a “safe zone” in the apartment complexes where many of these children live. The Fallbrook Citizens Crime Prevention Committee (FCCPC) believes that mentors are invaluable role models for the children in the program. These relationships provide an important foundation, encourage the children to create lifelong goals, and direct them to become contributing, successful members of the community.

The GANAS Mentoring Program currently holds sessions during the school year at four sites. There are usually 10 to12 children, and if there are enough volunteers, two to four mentors per site. At the beginning of the school year, all mentors attend a training session and go through a screening procedure which includes fingerprinting.

Individual support for the mentors is always available throughout the year. Residents are invited to come anytime between 3 and 5:30 p.m. for the mentor recruiting event at Scoreboard Pizzeria, 1125 S. Mission Road (Albertson’s Shopping Center), on Tuesday, Sept. 9.

For more information, call Melissa Resnick (760) 731-3963 or Pat Braendel (760) 731-9127.