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Did you know that 84% of �鶹��Ƶ alums say their service experience helped them decide on a career path? A 2024 Cornell study explores more the workforce ready skills �鶹��Ƶ alums sharpen during a year of service and why community engagement is important to them.

Just as important to Rachel is her ongoing role as a mentor.

“I think that the power of mentorship extends far beyond �鶹��Ƶ. �鶹��Ƶ is a great starting point for mentoring relationships,” Rachel says.

“And, you know, I think that I learned how to be a mentor at my core through my service here. I’ve been able to utilize a lot of those skills, throughout all of the relationships, in every facet of my life. I use it in my consulting business; I use it in teaching; I use it as a parent; I use it everywhere.”

The ripple effect of mentoring: Helping the next generation

Rachel and Josh met during Summer of 2022 between his freshman and sophomore years through a mutual friend when Josh was working on online summer courses – something he hadn’t done before as a traditional campus student – when he found he needed some ‘human contact’ to help guide him through.

During their conversations, Rachel instantly related to Josh’s sentiment about how difficult it can be to gather real-life experiences in certain fields.

When Rachel talked about her �鶹��Ƶ service, she talked about how she used her year of service to help reposition her life and figure out what she wanted to do next. Rachel’s story inspired Josh to also consider serving with �鶹��Ƶ.

He joined �鶹��Ƶ New Hampshire last summer and currently serves in Parkside Middle School in Manchester, NH.

“�鶹��Ƶ has given me leadership opportunities and skills that I can use for myself to push through that wall that I was facing when Rachel and I met,” Josh says.

“Since then, I’ve worked with so many people who have given me so much…and it’s all thanks to Rachel has really pushed me in the direction that I’ve wanted to go.”

Today, Josh aspires to be a social worker. His mom is a therapist, and he’s always had an interest in the field but found it hard to get hands-on experience working with children in schools, which made �鶹��Ƶ an even more perfect fit.

“I’m at the point that I am now in my life, all because of Rachel, if it wasn’t for her, I’d probably still be pushing through that wall and trying to get through it somehow magically,” Josh says.

“She has really been my �鶹��Ƶ in the sense of, I was at a point where I didn’t really have that direction. I’m a little bit older than some of my fellow corps members, but she’s really been that kind of role model and mentor of breaking everything down and offering that structure that I needed at the time.

“And that’s really been like a blueprint of how I’m trying to model, how I’m showing up for my students.”

Building a mentoring network

Mentorship has been so central to Rachel and Josh’s development and learning, they plan to continue mentoring more young people, and hope to strengthen networks of �鶹��Ƶ alumni.

“One thing that I’m really excited to keep seeing is the continued value and power of mentorship beyond the service year with �鶹��Ƶ,” Rachel says. “It’d be really great to be able to see alumni like me, and future alumni like Josh, being able to stay in touch and continue to mentor other alumni afterwards. Wouldn’t it be cool if we had a network where we’d able to continually like scaffold our mentorship and have it continue so just that power right there would be such an amazing network to fall back on, like almost like a giant web.”

Mentoring benefits both the mentor and the mentee.

“I’m thankful for the mentoring relationship that I have with Josh,” Rachel says. “I owe just as much to him. I’ve learned a lot from my time with him.”