MENTOR (The National Mentoring Partnership) recently honored Vermont resident Eddie Gale by presenting him with an Excellence in Mentoring Award. Gale, a resident of Johnson, was one of four 2018 award recipients, and was recognized during a special reception at the Library of Congress during the 2018 National Mentoring Summit in January. “The Excellence in Mentoring Award recipients represent the innovation and commitment necessary to close the mentoring gap – and what is possible when we place relationships at the center of everything we do,” said MENTOR CEO David Shapiro. “It is through the continued support and investment of leading philanthropists like the board of trustees of the AD Henderson Foundation and the efforts of Eddie Gale that we continue to build and unify the mentoring movement.”
The Excellence in Mentoring Awards are presented annually to individuals who have demonstrated a longstanding commitment to meeting the mentoring needs of young people at the national, state or local level. Gale was nominated for the award by Mobius, the Vermont affiliate of MENTOR, for his commitment to growing the statewide mentoring movement in his role as the Vermont program director of the AD Henderson Foundation. The Henderson Foundation is one of the major funders of the Vermont Mentoring Grants, Mobius’ annual grants program to support the planning, launching, and continuation of quality-based youth mentoring programs in Vermont.
“Mobius would not exist today if not for Eddie and the Henderson Foundation,” said Chad Butt, executive director of Mobius. “The Vermont mentoring community is poised to continue to expand and improve, and because of Eddie’s dedication to the mentoring cause, Mobius has the support it needs to lead this process.”
About Mobius: Now in its fifth 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 AD 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.