In partnership with the Austin Independent School District (AISD) and Del Valle ISD, the Project MALES Mentoring Program recently kicked off its mentor sessions this week at all thirteen PM sites! This year marks the eighth year that we have conducted mentoring for schools in Central Texas. We now serve over 150 young male students of color matching them up with almost seventy UT undergraduates who serve as their mentors in weekly sessions at each school.
Our mentorship program starts at the middle school level where our mentors engage with students using an SEL-based curriculum. We are at the following AISD middle schools: Webb Middle School, Martin Middle School, Mendez Middle School, Burnet Middle School, and Gus Garcia Young Men’s Leadership Academy, and at Ojeda Middle School, Del Valle MS and Dailey MS in Del Valle ISD (DVISD). In addition, we are at the following AISD high schools: Travis Early College High School (ECHS), Lanier High School, Reagan ECHS, Eastside Memorial ECHS, and Lyndon B. Johnson ECHS in Austin ISD. We are excited to add DVSID to our AISD rosters of schools that we have served the past seven years.
Project MALES mentors are led by Mentoring Site Coordinators – Danielle Marie Zaragoza, Edgar Fidel Lopez, Victor Hugo Martin, and Allanah Manzanares – who are each assigned three sites to lead.
All new undergraduate mentors must enroll in the Impacting Males through Peer Advising College Tracks (IMPACT), our two-credit service-learning course concurrent with placement in a school site.
Our mentors will continue to create dialogue around issues impacting young men of color in our communities focusing on a variety of themes and pillars which guide our work: Identity, Brotherhood, Leadership, Health Wellness, and College and Career Readiness.
We are looking forward to another successful semester at Project MALES, please stay tuned to learn more about our mentors and our school sites as we will be profiling individual mentoring sites in the following weeks.
