Mobius is excited to announce that its executive director, Chad Butt, has been elected as the 2018 vice-chair of the Mentoring Affiliate Advisory Council (MAAC) for MENTOR (The National Mentoring Partnership). Butt is one of eight members on the council, which is made up of leaders from state or regional affiliates of MENTOR across the country.
“MAAC members serve as key thought partners and informants to MENTOR as Affiliates are the primary distribution channel for helping close the mentoring gap,” said Joellen Spacek, senior director of the Affiliate Network at MENTOR. “Chad is both a leader locally and nationally and his elevation to Vice Chair of MAAC illustrates how highly regarded Chad is amongst MENTOR Affiliates, who value his leadership and look to him to elevate our shared work.”
Butt has been a member of MAAC since 2016 and has served as the executive director of Mobius since 2013. During his tenure, he has overseen Mobius’ successful transition from a regional age cy into a well-established statewide mentoring partnership. Prior to his time at Mobius, he was the program director for The DREAM Program, a mentoring organization that matches college students as mentors for youth living in affordable housing communities. He is a 2004 graduate of Dartmouth College, and resides with his wife and daughter in Burlington.
“We are excited to have Chad represent the Vermont youth mentoring community on a national stage,” said Nate Formalarie, chair of the Mobius Board of Directors. “His leadership will undoubtedly be an asset to the great work that MAAC and MENTOR are doing to shape the direction and expansion of mentoring nationally.”
MAAC provides MENTOR and the youth mentoring field with capacity-building expertise and strategic guidance on a variety of national initiatives and projects such as the development of the National Quality Mentoring System (a common system for evaluating program quality standards), resource development, public awareness, public policy and research. MAAC is comprised of leaders from the national network of MENTOR affiliates who are selected through a peer nomination process.
Mobius is the Vermont affiliate of MENTOR and is one of more than 25 state and regional organizations in MENTOR’s national network of affiliate organizations. These affiliates are non-partisan, public-private organizations that galvanize local or statewide mentoring movements. They provide the leadership and infrastructure necessary to support the expansion of quality mentoring relationships.
About Mobius
Now in its sixth year as Vermont’s Mentoring Partnership, Mobius supports approximately 140 adult-to-youth mentoring program sites that serve 2,300 mentor pairs throughout the state. Mobius awards more than $300,000 to youth mentoring agencies annually through the Vermont Mentoring Grants, which are made possible by support from the A.D. Henderson Foundation, the Vermont Department for Children and Families, and the Permanent Fund for Vermont's Children. Mobius also offers technical support to program staff, maintains an online program directory and referral system for volunteers, manages a quality-based program management database, raises public awareness of mentoring, works with programs to ensure they are meeting best practices, and leads statewide mentoring initiatives. For more information about Mobius, and mentoring programs and initiatives in Vermont, visit www.mobiusmentors.org.
About MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership is the unifying champion for quality youth mentoring in the United States. MENTOR’s mission is to close the “mentoring gap” and ensure our nation’s young people have the support they need through quality mentoring relationships to succeed at home, school, and ultimately, work. To achieve this, MENTOR collaborates with its network of affiliate organizations and works to drive the investment of time and money into high impact mentoring programs and advance quality mentoring through the development and delivery of standards, cutting-edge research and state-of-the-art tools. For more information, visit www.mentoring.org.