RCL Mentorship Program Graduation Ceremony (tentative)
Rich Wolman
RCL Mentorship Program Graduation Ceremony (tentative)
Rotary Club of Lancaster/ McCaskey High School Mentoring Program Graduation Ceremony -May 10, 2023
The Rotary Club of Lancaster will host a graduation ceremony for the Rotary-McCaskey Mentoring Program on May 10th, 2023, at The Farm & Home Center, 1383 Arcadia Rd, Lancaster, PA 17601. McCaskey Seniors who completed the Mentor Program will receive certificates of graduation at the Ceremony to signify their successful completion of this multi-year extracurricular program.
The Rotary-McCaskey Mentoring Program is a flagship community initiative for the Rotary Club of Lancaster. The Program connects Junior and Senior students at McCaskey High School with caring adults – businesspersons, retired executives, non-profit and healthcare executives, among others – who visit them at the school to participate in monthly career-building activities and life-advice discussions. The program aims to build mutually respectful relationships between mentors and students where the students will gain exposure to successful role-models, leadership perspectives and life lessons which, in turn, will help ensure that they make wise decisions, graduate from McCaskey, become gainfully employed with life-sustaining wages and grow to be future leaders and role models in their community. Approximately 26 students and 14 mentors participate in the Rotary-McCaskey Mentoring Program each year.
90% of the students within the School District of Lancaster live in poverty. “Many of the students deal with so many challenges in and outside of school,” says Alicia Moranz, former co-chair of the Rotary Club of Lancaster’s Mentoring Committee. “These mentoring relationships show the students that someone truly cares whether they show up and are successful in school.” Rich Wolman, chair of the Committee, added “Oftentimes the mentors get as much out of these relationships as the students.” “Mentoring has been linked with positive outcomes,” says Wolman, “Students who have successful role models graduate at a rate exceeding the school district averages and have deeper connections to their school and community.”
We will also be conferring our annual Rotary-McCaskey Mentor Program Thaddeus Stevens Scholarship Award on the selected McCaskey senior at the Graduation Ceremony. Several years ago, an anonymous donor honored our Mentor Program by establishing a permanent endowment fund with the Thaddeus Stevens Foundation. The intent of the endowment fund is to award a scholarship for tuition assistance at Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology for a graduate of our Program. The scholarship provides funding for the selected student for both years of the two-year Thaddeus Stevens college program. Since the endowment is a permanent fund, it will be available in perpetuity for the mutual benefit of both our Mentor Program students who will be awarded the scholarship in the future and Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology. “The scholarship is a recognition of the dedication and efforts of all of the mentors in our Mentor Program,” says Moranz.