BROWNSBURG — If the mantra that good things happen to good people is the truth, it would explain the rapid rise to success that Impact Youth is having. So much so, that the group already has a waiting list of children

needing mentors.

Impact Youth came about when Donald James, junior varsity basketball coach for Brownsburg High School, saw a need.

“Really it was coaching,” he said of where he conceptualized the idea. “Working with those kids out there, I realized a bunch of them come from single parent homes and struggled with grades,

behavior, and a lot of it seemed to come from where they don’t always have a role model to look up to.

“Well, then I started having kids and I didn’t always have the time to devote to them after practices and things like that, so I knew somehow I wanted to volunteer my time, maybe with a Big Brothers,

Big Sister type of organization. Then I realized they didn’t have that here locally and I just thought about putting something together out here to provide role models for kids.”

When the program started, James said he was seeing patterns of poor behavior in school, dropping grades, and negative attention-seeking mechanisms.

“So far, all the kids that had those issues with behavior or in school have improved since they’ve had a mentor,” James said.

Mentors in the program are ages 16 and older, and the requirement is just simply spending at least one hour a week with the child you’re matched with.

“We have mentors that text them too, talk to them on the phone, let them know when they have tests coming up, ask about how things are going at home and the kids appreciate someone else investing some time in them,” he said.



Some of the most clairvoyant achievements of the program have come with high school students matched up with youth as mentors. James notes that the high schoolers attach quickly to the younger children needing help and it ends up teaching something to the young mentors as well.

“We wanted it to not only be a mentoring program, but also a place where high school and college mentors could learn some leadership and responsibility, as well as learn the way other people

live, as they grow and move into the professional world,” James said. “This teaches them to see outside themselves and really take an interest in someone else. One of the best feelings in the world

that anyone can have is to make a kid smile or laugh, and our high school kids have exceeded our expectations tenfold.”

James looks back to one instance in particular where he saw the program make the impact he sought when he conceived the idea.

“We had a high school kid working with a young man who’s dad was not around,” he recalled. “In fact, he’d never even seen him and he was very hands off from his mom and wasn’t relating to her well. I got a letter from her about two months in and it said essentially that her son was a completely different kid. He was happier about life.

She said that her son gave her hugs now and that they talked all the time. That’s kind of the story with all of these kids. They just enjoy life and are just happier than they were before they had a mentor.”

He said teachers are also seeing the benefits of the program.

“We had another kid who couldn’t make grades, couldn’t get over the 2.0 mark he was looking for,” he said. “He started working with a mentor and now he has achieved going over that number his last

two grading periods. The results have been tremendous and we couldn’t be happier with the program.”

That being said, success often breeds the need for more resources, and James stresses the dire need for more mentors as the vision takes hold and the program continues to expand in size.

“We are all over Hendricks County,” he said. “We’re looking for any kid that might need some help or any family that thinks their boy or girl could use this, and we’re really looking for mentors. We really

need them, not just high school aged, but college aged and young adults. The community in general is in need of mentors and with our program, we already have a waiting list of nearly 10 kids that need to be matched up, so long as we can get them in, interview them, and set them up as a good match.”

The training process involves a two-hour course that goes over the things a mentor might encounter during their time with the program. It also goes over what Impact Youth expects.

“We provide them a book and all the materials they might need,” James said. “We go over things they can expect, things the kids will expect from them, and what families will expect from them. We try to

give as much information as possible so they’re not taken aback by any of it.”

But he’s quick to add that the program allows mentors the freedom and responsibility to decide how to tailor the relationship with the child they’re matched up with.

He said some will take their child to sporting events or downtown to see the lighting of the Christmas tree on the circle, while others help their child study or go to the library to get help with homework.

“So far they’ve done a great job,” James said of the mentors, and added that part of the mentoring process is to form a good communication line with the families of the children being mentored.

“The Avon cheerleaders had a Christmas party for us where all the mentors and kids were there, and it was rewarding for us as a company to see them and to see all the matches interact with one another was really cool,” he said.

Impact Youth is a non-profit organization, and James uses monthly fundraisers to help bring in the necessary help to keep it running.

The next is at Orange Leaf Frozen Yogurt in Avon on Feb. 28 where anyone who mentions Impact Youth will have a portion of their purchase go to the program. Also, Big O Tires in Brownsburg has

donated a set of $400 tires to the group, which will go to a donor in a raffle for whomever gives to the program right now.

The success of the program has James looking toward the future.

“Five years from now, we hope to have a building of our own,” he said. “We hope to be respected throughout the community and that means we’re helping more and more kids.”

He said they’re working on leadership programs  as well as doing volunteer work for places like hospitals, nursing homes, and parks.

“I’m a mentor, and the gratification you get when you see a kid smile or see him happy is the best feeling in the world,” James said. “It makes you feel better about yourself and gives that self-satisfaction that you know you’re helping someone else. Being able to give that joy, it just puts everything into perspective. The high school mentors we have say the same things in terms of how happy they are and you can see them light up when they talk about the kids they’ve been working with. We’re doing something right, so we’ve just got to keep doing what’s right and get good people involved. From there, good things will keep happening.”

For more information about the program or to become a mentor, contact James by calling 679-5672 or by e-mailing to djames@impactyouthmentoring.org, or visit the website at impactyouthmentoring.org.