GRIP Basketball Night

On January 29th GRIP Mentors and their mentees enjoyed the Ballard Varsity Girls and Boys basketball games. Pairs got to watch the games while spending time togehter and interacting with other mentoring pairs.

This event was to honor National Mentoring Month (January). A nice collection of mentors and mentees photos were presented on the score board during this time.

Ballard Schools kindly let the mentors and mentees in free for this event. This is the 3rd year of this great event!

GRIP Literacy Training

This week GRIP hosted a new project that I have been working on as an AmeriCorps VISTA with the program: literacy. Now, when most people hear 'literacy' they cringe and think of being made to sit and read book after book. Not Jerri Heid!!

Jerri is the Youth Specialist at the Ames Public Library and also a member of the Ames Reads Coalition. I had previously met her through our connecting with Ames Reads and we discussed the options of a literacy training. She was thrilled with the idea and volunteered to head off the project.

So this week Jerri gave an AMAZING training about the importance and power of literacy to GRIP mentors and staff as well as YSS staff. She spoke of the 5 key literacy components and gave tons of fun and creative ideas to incorporate literacy.


We have recorded the training and it can be found at the Youth and Shelter Services YouTube page: here. You can also find some of Jerri's ideas on her Pinterest page. The board she used during the presentation is called 'Tutor.'

GRIP Pizza and Movie Night

Last week GRIP hosted it's 9th annual Pizza and Movie Night. Pairs in Ames were invited to come meet other matches, play games, eat pizza and watch a movie.

We played hangman, tic-tac-toe and battleship while the pairs ate pizza here at the Jacobson Center in Ames. The pairs got to enjoy learning about other mentoring pairs who are all from the Ames area. Many of our pairs are in their first year together, but we had several pairs who had been together for more than 4 or 5 years!
 

After pizza we trekked upstairs to watch Pixar's Brave. During the movie we served popcorn and M&M's. The event was TONS of fun and we appreciated such a great turnout from our mentoring pairs! We hope next years is just as fun.