Three Palmyra High School seniors have started a Mentoring Young Men program for their younger peers at school who need a helping hand or a sympathetic ear
Stephen Finn
The Sun
Palmyra High School seniors Faragi Robinson, Samuel Aviles and Sean Hull are making the most out of their final year in high school. The three athletes are well known throughout their school and are using this fact to lend help and support to their underclassmen.
Along with Principal Lisa Sabo, the three students formed the Mentoring Young Men program.
“We mentor the younger children, the ones that seem to have more energy than others. We help them out and talk to them when they need to be talked to. We talk about their grades and behaviors. They’re like our little brothers in the school,” said Aviles.
“These young men were chosen because they are standout athletes,” said Sabo. “We have a lot of students who look up to them, who see them as role models so I wanted them to have an opportunity to talk to some of the younger men who do see them that way.”
According to Sabo, the program started when the three students “invaded” her office during their homeroom period. They were looking for something meaningful to do during the first period of the day so they came up with this service project that became the mentoring program.
Aviles says a lot of what they hear from the younger children has to do with what goes on at home and why they act certain ways in the classroom. They often feel more comfortable opening up to them as opposed to an adult staff member at the school.
“We can relate to them more. We come from similar situations so they’re more comfortable talking to us,” said Aviles.
A lot of what the mentors encounter stems from self-esteem issues and feelings of loneliness. Although young people are more connected now than ever before, the rise of social media has another side to it that kids today are dealing with.
“Social media sets unrealistic standards for people our age, younger kids and adults. Everybody is basing their lives off of what’s on social media,” said Aviles.
Growing up, Robinson, Aviles and Hull felt like they didn’t have older people to look up to and had to figure things out on their own. They want to provide younger students in their school with something they didn’t have.
As athletes, they often encourage younger students to look into sports as an outlet.
“It’s better to take their mind off things when they do sports because they can just focus on what they’ve got to do and get better at the game,” said Robinson.
“It gives them something to do and they’re away from the madness for a little bit,” added Aviles.
In addition to the mentoring program, the young men were also looking for a community service project. They did their own research and came up with a clothing drive for Joseph’s Shelter in Camden.
They have been making the rounds throughout their school each morning collecting lightly used clothing they can take to the shelter. Although they have yet to sort through everything they have collected so far, the drive has been a huge success and they have amassed dozens of articles of clothing from staff and students over the past couple of weeks.
All of the mentors plan on attending college next year and feel like the program has influenced what they might want to do someday.
“We’re people persons,” said Aviles.
