SMILES attends Youth Mentoring Day at the Statehouse

Thursday, January 21st 2010 was a fantastic day for SMILES Mentoring! We were graced with the opportunity to visit the Massachusetts Statehouse with 12 mentor/mentee matches. We were given the opportunity to meet with over a half dozen of our area law makers and have our voices heard. Representative Aguiar, Representative Canessa, Representative Haddad, Representative Rodrigues, Representative Sullivan, State Senator Menard and State Senator Montigny were all gracious enough to open their office doors and personally listen to SMILES mentors, mentees and staff speak about the power of mentoring and what they can do to help the program grow.

We were able to tour the grandious Statehouse and learned fun facts, like that fact that the golden dome of the Statehouse is covered in 23 karat gold flakes thinner than paper!

SMILES mentees urged the legislators to find more funding for programs like SMILES and other afterschool/extracurricular activities, since they're seeing many of their friends getting into trouble on the streets.

Our voices were loud and unified along with many other programs that day at the Statehouse. Check out our pictures below!

David Shapiro, Executive Director of the Mass Mentoring Partnership addressing the crowd.Group of SMILES matches with Rep. Haddad, Rep. Aguiar, Rep. Sullivan and Rep RodriguesSMILES matches looking very official in the Senate Chambers - thanks Senator Menard for the inside peek!