Sonoma Valley Mentoring Alliance celebrates 20 years

Last week, seven adults and seven kids stood side by side at folding tables inside the cafeteria at Altimira Middle School methodically cutting up and tying knots into sheets of felt. They were there to make blankets - 10 in all, to be donated to the Valley of the Moon Children’s Home.

The pairs were part of the Sonoma Valley Mentoring Alliance which, this year, celebrates its 20th anniversary pairing together adults with kids in the community who need an extra layer of social and emotional support. Since the program’s start, 1,700 mentors and mentees have been matched in all.

Once mentors and children are coupled, they usually meet once a week to hang out after school. Sometimes it’s to participate in events like this one, where the students learn about giving back to the community, but other times they tour workplaces - an effort to inspire youth and open their eyes about career possibilities. This February, for example, a group went to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View.

Sonoma Valley Mentoring Alliance has a presence on eight Sonoma Valley Unified School District campuses as well as at the Hanna Boys School. Currently the program has 450 active matches, said Executive Director Lee Morgan Brown, with 100 more kids on the waiting list.

It’s the kids’ teachers who first identify students to be in the program. About 75 percent of the group’s members are Latino, and more than half are low-income, Morgan Brown said.

“There’s many mentees where money is not the issue,” she said. “But it’s a single-parent family, a lost parent, an incarcerated parent, or two parents working hard. Trying to make a living in California is challenging, and they know their child or children need an additional caring adult in their life.”

Victoria McCracken, 32, a teacher at El Verano Elementary School, stood next to her mentee, Alonda Sanabria, 10, inside the cafeteria Friday. The two were creating a purple blanket - Sanabria’s favorite color.

Behind them stood Len Grosso, a retired 70-year-old businessman, and his mentee, 12-year-old Gabriel Bragg.

Bragg chose a red-white-and-blue patterned felt for his blanket, and the two took a break for a minute as Grosso showed Bragg how to tie a square knot.

The nonprofit functions on a $700,000 annual budget, Morgan Brown said - about 50 percent donations, 35 percent grants, and the other 15 percent a mix of funding sources.

Gaby Romo, 15, is a sophomore at Sonoma Valley High School. She met her mentor Betty Calabro, a retired 64-year-old teacher, in second grade.

“I really have enjoyed watching Gaby grow into a very independent and capable young lady,” Calabro said. “She takes her school work very seriously, and she wants to do well. I enjoy spending time with her.”

It’s been a good thing for Romo, too.

“Some people, they don’t have that extra support system,” she said. “So they don’t try as hard to keep their grades up, and to actually try hard to be the best person you can be.”