Bridge to Hope Mentors
Please join us in welcoming Susy McAlvin to Bridge to Hope. Susy will begin on April 11th.
Thanks to the Cape Cod Foundation, we have now hired another staff person to meet with Bridge to Hope mentees living in the community who need assistance facing barriers that are very difficult to overcome without an advocate. Our outreach will include assistance with housing, employment, education and family reunification.
Bridge to Hope is proud to welcome Susy McAlvin to our team. We are blessed to have someone from the Cape Cod community who has walked the walk so well-known by our precious mentees. Over the past nine years, Susy has walked through the restoration process in her own life. She is eager to share her step-by-step walk through a life-changing program in New Hampshire, her college education with Zion Bible College and most importantly how God has healed and strengthened her faith by supplying all her needs.
ONE-ON-ONE MENTORING RESPONSIBILITIES
Makes contact with Mentee while serving their sentence to establish trusting relationship and increase ability to understand directly from the Mentee the experience and effects of Incarceration.
Attends monthly support meetings.
Participates in monthly training workshops to follow a support meeting to address further aspects of mentoring.
Provides assistance transitioning back into the community upon release (housing, support programs, counseling appointments, AA/NA meetings.
Provides transportation to appointments and meetings, if possible.
Time commitment: Weekly correspondence and monthly visits during incarceration and weekly visits or phone calls upon release for first three months.
NOTE: Mentoring is crucial during the first week of release and the following three months because this is a typical time of relapse.
BAYSIDE COTTAGE: If your mentee is released and is accepted at Bayside Cottage, she needs to have a mentor for the entire time she is living there in order to meet the requirement of having a mentor to live at the Cottage.
Beth Moore says, “The richest testimonies come from people Christ has made whole who still well remember what it is like to be broken.”
We started with 6 mentors and now have 22 mentors and together with God’s help, we have assisted over 100 women and only 20 have gone back to jail. Who are BTH Mentors? They are formerly incarcerated women, hairdressers, a pastor’s wife, secretaries, nurses, retired teachers, a principal, school superintendent, a GED teacher and…. 2 Mentees are now Mentors! Our goal is to have more mentees join us as mentors (after 2 years of mentoring).
Mentor quotes
“Participating in the Bridge to Hope program with the true belief that ‘there but for the grace of God go I’, has been a great time of spiritual growth for me, sharing my faith with my mentee, visiting with her in the Pod, and encouraging her to trust God to lead her out of the realm of her alcohol addiction. We have established a good rapport and I look forward to her cards and letters as much as she looks forward to mine. I thank God continually for this Bridge to Hope opportunity.” -Elizabeth N.
“One blessing: we share the same birthday. What are the odds of that? …. It was a tough birthday for her – no cards from her sons, but she knows she needs to not dwell on the negative, but look for the positive. I had been feeling a little let down that one of my sons was camping and couldn’t come to our family birthday cookout, but my mentee’s situation helped me to realize how fortunate I am to have received cards, presents and phone calls … Being in touch with my mentee gives me a sense of what the word priority means!“ -Marilyn L.
