Free Press Reporter Joel Banner Bird interviews mentee Jeannette Ndihokubwayo


the article below was featured in the Burlington Free Press on Saturday, December 13th 2008.

College Students Team with Young Neighbors


By Joel Banner Baird

A sign announced "FUN" as the destination of the blue bus that pulled into Franklin Square in Burlington on Friday evening.

In much larger letters, painted on the sides, "DREAM" describes the direction of its travel -- and the tour's sponsor: Winooski-based Directing through Recreation, Education, Adventure and Mentoring Inc.

Steaming hot pans of pasta lay waiting in the Hunt Middle School cafeteria for at least two school kids and their mentors from St. Michael's College.

Waiting for the food line to thin, St. Michael's senior Kylie Edwards, 21, clowned around with Jeannette Ndihokubwayo, 9.

Edwards has been a part of the volunteer program for almost four years. During that time, she said, Jeannette has grown from a shy newcomer to Vermont (she was born in Tanzania) into an irrepressible extrovert.

"We pretty much just have fun," Jeannette said. "We cook. We play. We hang out."

"We're pretty tight," Edwards said.

Cailie Burns, 23, a St. Michael's graduate and former mentor, now coordinates the nonprofit's 12 community development programs in Vermont.

She said college volunteers not only pay weekly visits to their adopted housing developments, but also run adventure camps, extended summer sessions and academic seminars.

The organization specializes in face-to-face encounters, she said: DREAM partners with parents, foundations, municipal housing authorities and schools.

Although its mission -- to open marginalized neighborhoods to new possibilities -- sounds serious, giddiness rules the roost, Burns said.

Program Director Chad Butt, 24, a 2004 graduate of Dartmouth College (where DREAM began in 1999), agreed.

"Part of the appeal is getting out of the college bubble," he said. "Mentors get to hang out with little kids and be big kids."