A recent event at Jardin de los Niños in Las Cruces offered the public the opportunity to see poster presentations from those taking part in the Flourishing Families Parent Mentoring program. The program aims to prepare parents who are struggling with hardships and makes them more confident and open minded to achieve their goals. During their presentations the mentees talked about the struggles they had before joining the program and the mentors to achieve their goals. Victoria Roberson is the Operations & Community Engagement Coordinator with the organization. She shared what the program provides for parents.
“The Flourishing Family Parent Mentoring Program is a program that we take our parents who are here who we serve at Jardin and we bring in community members and partners to be there mentors in this program and it’s a 8-month long program to where they work collaboratively together to grow their professional and personal skills and set goal at the beginning of the program to try to achieve those goals through the eight months,” Roberson said.
Orenzo Daniels III, is a mentee with the program, Orenzo says he was homeless and jobless. He joined the program where he met his mentor who helped him set and meet his goals.
“So, he provided guidance he helped me focus on 5 goals instead of a bunch of goals at once and what that allowed me to do is focus my time and energy on those goals instead of spreading myself to thin where nothing got done, it helped me still achieve my goals while being present for my family and my community,” Daniels said.
Dr. Carlos Posadas is a criminal justice professor at NMSU and is Orenzo’s mentor. Dr. Posadas says that the program is a good networking opportunity for mentors and mentees to get involved with.
“If you get the opportunity to participate, participate it’s a great way to meet people in the community and it even goes beyond the mentor and mentee relationship but also the people at Jardin De Los Niños are awesome and the people they connect you because of the program are great and so it’s really a good networking opportunity for everybody involved,” Posadas said.
Dr. Esther Devall is a retired professor at NMSU and is also a mentor. She says she hopes more people will join the program.
“It’s possible that some of their family members and friends are coming so it might encourage some of them to sign up for this kind of program that will mentor them and help them achieve their goals seeing how successful the folks have been, the mentee’s have been,” Devall said.
This story was produced by KRWG Public Media student interns Rima Joukhadar and Marco Becerra who are participants in the 2023 Doña Ana County Summer Enrichment Internship Program.