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TJC offers male mentor program

• Turner Job Corps holds an orientation meeting for its leadership and mentoring institute Friday.

Joshua Brown

ALBANY — When Turner Job Corps Center offered its male students a new mentoring institute, Fredrick Burke jumped at the chance.

“For me, not having a father in my life, it’s giving me the man-to-man relationship with someone older,” he said Friday during a break from the new program’s orientation.

Burke, 18, said he joined the program to prepare himself to help others.

“I feel like I already have leadership abilities, but in order to better myself, I need help so I can help better other people,” he said.

The center began offering the new institute because one of its mentors, David Lawton, had led a similar program in Valdosta, where he teaches public school. He asked TJC officials if he could implement an institute for leadership and mentoring at the school and got the OK, he said.

“What we really want to do is teach them how to be leaders,” he said. “What I want to do, me and Ms. (Kirsten) Jones want to really push them to set their minds to what they came here for.”

The institute, the curriculum for which is modeled after the book “Letters to a Young Brother” by Hill Harper, focuses on five areas: developing academic excellence, increasing self-esteem, and developing interpersonal, employability and life skills.

For 18 weeks the group of young men will experience small-group and one-on-one sessions with various male volunteers from the community, Lawton said.

About 20 students are currently enrolled in the institute, though not all of the interviews have been conducted for the approximately 150 applicants, Lawton said. The pilot program will have up to 60 slots available initially, he said.

Enrolled in the institute are the “cream of the crop,” Lawton said, who must demonstrate their calibre while on the campus.

“Each young man out here has been told they have to exemplify leadership qualities whenever they are on the center,” he said, including in his description of leadership neat grooming, respectfulness and punctuality.

Students who applied to the program had to write an essay about why they wanted to participate as well as have two letters of recommendation from TJC officials.

Guest speakers at the 18-week institute will cover things such as employability skills, entrepeneurship, finances, family life and will even conduct mock job interviews for the students to help them prepare for the real thing, Lawton said.

“We’ll teach them what kind of questions they should have for employers and what kind of questions the employers might have for them and things of that nature,” he said.

Lawton said he wanted to appeal to the men of Albany and Dougherty County to contact him at (229) 630-8819 about volunteering their time for the institute.

“These young men are taking a step toward something positive, not only for themselves but for their families,” he said. “They’re doing something extremely positive. ... They’re the cream of the crop.”

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