While up the hill, it can be easy to forget the broader community that Colgate University exists within. Madison Mentors (M&M’s), Sidekicks and Friends First are three clubs on campus that make an active effort to give back to the community that Colgate students all call home for eight months a year. All three clubs focus on mentoring students at local schools to provide them with a personal connection to someone at Colgate.
M&M’s travels to Madison Central School every week to spend 30 minutes playing games and talking to their mentees. Both Sidekicks and Friends First, who mentor elementary and upper school students, respectively, at Hamilton Central School, spend time off of school grounds doing different activities weekly.
Sophomore Sienna Staver, president of Friends First, shared some of the activities she and her buddy do through Friends First.
“My buddy and I have a wide range of favorite activities,” Staver said. “We love doing fun stuff in town like going to Village Clay to paint pottery or taking a trip to the farmers market. But we also love just hanging out and getting food.”
For Sidekicks and Friends First, mentors set their own schedules and plan individual activities with their mentees that allow them to spend quality one-on-one time together. To create the personal connections with the kids that they strive for, all three clubs create mentor pairs that stay together for all four years that the Colgate student is on campus.
“I think it’s important that you stick with your mentee all four years because we’re trying to build strong bonds with these kids,” Staver said. “You become someone that they can go to for advice, someone they can talk to that’s older and not their parent, or someone to just have fun with. Disrupting that bond by switching mentors would mean losing the closeness that we build with them. My mentee’s mom had a mentor at Colgate through Friends First when she was a kid, and they’re still in touch today.”
Through these relationships, mentors hope to have a positive and long-lasting impact on the lives of their mentees. Sophomore Bess Hort, a member of Sidekicks, shared similar sentiments about her role as a mentor.
“My goal as a mentor is to be a good role model and help my buddy in any way I can, whether that means being a friend to her or just someone she feels like she can talk to,” Hort said.
While taking on the responsibility of being a role model can be daunting, giving back to the broader Hamilton community is rewarding for mentors. The relationships built are not just beneficial for the kids but for their mentors too.
Sophomore Kathryn Shearer, an active member of M&M’s, discussed how her involvement in community service transformed her perspective.
“Meeting these kids who have drastically different life experiences from me gives me a really unique perspective,” Shearer said.“Seeing how much it means to show up for other people, especially when sometimes you are the only adult who is giving them one-on-one attention, is really impactful.”
Colgate’s campus can feel like an isolated bubble, but making the active effort to get off campus and be engaged in Hamilton has shaped the way that Hort feels about the community that surrounds the University.
“Being a mentor makes me feel more connected to Hamilton because I get to explore areas of Hamilton with my buddy and see the area through her eyes,” Hort said.
Mentoring is a unique act of service; it is a fun and impactful way to get involved while at Colgate.
