I Have a Dream Volunteer Mentors have a special relationship with our Dreamers.
Our volunteer mentors provide one-to-one guidance, support, and encouragement for an extended period of time (at least a year, but hopefully longer).
As a volunteer mentor, you’ll have a positive attitude, heaps of patience, and an interest in seeing children succeed. You’ll be a consistent, dependable, and respectful presence in the life of a Dreamer, meeting with them for two to three hours each month to help introduce them to new ideas and concepts, work environments, and opportunities. If your Dreamer is interested in something, you’ll take the time to explore their curiosity in an age-appropriate way, doing activities with them that nurtures their ideas and interests.
You’ll need to be a good communicator and be committed to the ideals, mission, and vision of I Have a Dream – and you’ll know how valuable a good role model can be in the life of a child.
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When Year 7 Dreamer Haze Heta mentioned he’d never seen a sheep being shorn, his Mentor Peter Ogle sensed a unique learning opportunity. Peter, who comes from a farming background, challenged Haze to “plank” for two minutes – with the reward being a trip to a real sheep farm.
Of course, Haze nailed it, and Dreamer and Mentor set off for Sandy and Sharyn Moore’s Purua farm on a rainy winter’s day. With sheep, cows, ducks, and other animals to see, the Moores’ farm also had a working forestry operation felling 120 hectares of pine at the time Haze and Peter visited. Haze was thrilled with the chance to see the harvester, automatic chainsaws, and excavators. “It was definitely a highlight seeing the pine trees fall down. We watched this for ages. It was cool,” Haze recalls.
Peter was also able to show Haze other farming practices, such as how to work an electric fence, how to spot the difference between a female cow and a male bull, and, of course, the original purpose of the trip: What happens in the shearing shed, with the shearers, rousies, and press men all working together to make the bales of wool. Haze was even roped in to help the shed hand pen up the sheep for the shearers, and move them under the woolshed with the help of the farm dogs.
The chance to expose Dreamers to new ideas and concepts, work environments, and opportunities is a key objective of the Mentor/Dreamer relationship. And it’s not only the Dreamers who get a kick out these new experiences. “Being able to share these new experiences with Haze really made my day,” Peter says.
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futures for Kiwi kids.
