AUBURN – The Child Health Center and Big Brothers Big Sisters of America have been working together since 1998 to ensure that children in Androscoggin and Oxford counties have the opportunity to benefit from mentoring experiences.

The organizations support mentoring, but the opportunity would not be available if people in the community did not volunteer their time to act as positive role models for a child.

The Child Health Center is looking for adult community members to help the Big Brothers Big Sisters program in the Lisbon school system.

Every year the schools identify more children in need of a mentor than the number of mentors available. Prior to the school year, the center would like to identify and sign on a number of adults who would volunteer one hour a week to meet at the Lisbon Community School and P.W. Sugg Middle School and mentor a child.

The process of becoming a mentor is not difficult, it only takes a small amount of time and once signed on, participants will have a mentoring support team to help make the match a success.

The Big Brothers Big Sisters program offers every mentor a training program to prepare them for their match visits and on-going support is offered through a Child Health Center mentor coordinator.

Lt. Dan Michel, a 31-year veteran officer at the Lisbon Police Department, has been mentoring Nick Runyin for the past three years. He said mentoring takes time but it is rewarding as “it gives you a sense of helping a young person.”

Michel said, “You enter into a relationship with someone who wants to be in the program. Being in the program is voluntary, it isn’t something they have to do. So mentoring is voluntary on both sides.”

Mentors meet with mentees at his or her school for one hour a week during the school year. During the hour they have time to help the mentee with school work, play games and spend time talking and forming a friendship and bond.

Michel said that in their three-year match he has seen Runyan, his match, grow from a young person who wouldn’t say much to a youth who is willing to talk and share his experiences and feelings.