LEWISTON – Child Health Center’s Mentoring Coordinator Debbie Printy has accepted the position of mentoring coordinator for the Bates College Big Brothers Big Sisters program.

Bates College students are matched with children at the Pettingill School and Lewiston Middle School, where they will meet once a week for an hour.

Printy will work with the matches throughout the course of the school year. During their time together the matches will work on schoolwork, play games and share in other activities of interest to them. The program is developed to offer young children who need a little extra help one-on-one time with a positive role model.

Printy joined the Child Health Center in 2003 to work with a site-based mentoring program in the Gorham schools and to assist in the community based mentoring program throughout western Maine.

Printy states, “Adding the Bates College program to my work will add another dimension as I will be working with young men and women from all over the United Sates and possibly the world. This will be an exciting opportunity for the children in Lewiston to not only have a special person in their lives but to have someone from another part of the country or world and have the chance to learn about other lifestyles and cultures.”

Printy, who lives in Gray, stated that she has enjoyed her work with mentors so much that she and her husband, Wayne, have recently been matched with a little through the community-based program. She explained that her work with the program has been such a wonderful experience that they wanted to actually experience the joys of being a mentor to a child in need.

Anyone who would like to learn more about becoming a volunteer mentor in either the site- or community-based program should call 743-7035 in Norway, 782-5437 in Auburn.