Jan. 27, 2020

A community effort has launched to generate 5,200 mentors by 2026.

The Sioux 52 movement is a collaboration among the city of Sioux Falls, Helpline Center, the Rotary Club of Downtown Sioux Falls and Lawrence & Schiller as well as other business leaders.

The effort aims to cultivate 52 nonprofit partners and 520 business partners by 2026 as well. It officially launched today at a Downtown Rotary meeting.

“Everybody needs that one person to be that one person,” said Jessie Schmidt, president of Downtown Rotary. “The role Downtown Rotary can play, along with these businesses, is game-changing.”

The Augustana Research Institute helped the effort by assessing the community’s mentoring landscape and need for the service.

The Sioux 52 initiative lists 10 youth mentoring programs, five that serve adults and families, and three for senior citizens.

“All these organizations can use mentors,” Schmidt said. “And if you think you want to mentor tomorrow, there will be a quick assessment through the Helpline Center’s website to ask questions about your interest.”

Mentors will go through an application process and can share their areas of interest.

The hope is to partner with organizations that allow employees to receive time off to mentor, Schmidt added.

“And we’re figuring out how to engage our Rotarians, what are going to be our measurements and how we are going to determine success.”

To learn more about the Sioux 52 initiative, click here.

The effort builds on other mentorship approaches in the community. LSS Mentoring took over the program previously known as Big Brothers Big Sisters late last year.

GreatLIFE Golf & Fitness helped bring TeamMates mentoring to Sioux Falls recently through a relationship with founder Tom Osborne. The program matches mentors with students.

“The response has been really good,” GreatLIFE president Nick Ovenden said. “We have some GreatLIFE employees who signed up already, and we’ve had people get on board from all throughout the business community. We encourage people to mentor through any platform. We’re passionate about TeamMates because they match you based on strengths and commonalities with the kids. It takes a little longer to get matched, but the goal is to keep you connected three or more years.”