More Than One Way to Support Youth Mentoring
Over the years, as we’ve continued our work with Polished Pebbles Girls Mentoring Program, we’ve been fortunate to have our work supported by a network of 300+ volunteers within the Chicagoland area, and across the country. So often, lots of people always say to me that they want to support our girls by mentoring at our Saturday and after school sites. But, like all of us, there’s other priorities in life that can sometimes prevent us from making that level of commitment.
Last week I shared the story of one of our volunteers, Danielle Sackie Mensah, who lives in New York and decided to contribute to our work with Polished Pebbles, even though she couldn’t come out and physically mentor our girls at one of our sites. Danielle designed our Women in The Workplace Timeline poster that we gave away to our girls to celebrate Women’s History Month. This week, I was to share with you the profile of another young professional filmmaker, Corey Lewis.
The moment Cory S. Lewis stepped into his first television studio, he knew he was right at home. After his first “Take Your Child To Work Day” visit to the local CBS-affiliate in Chicago, he knew, at the age of 10, he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps.
Cory began his undergraduate education at Grand Valley State University, in Allendale, MI. While at GVSU he spent his time honing his skills by shooting, producing, and editing several independent productions, and plan the start of the university’s first student-run television station, GVBN.
Cory would return to Chicago in 2009 and earn his Bachelor’s Degree, with an emphasis in Film/Television Production, from Chicago State University in 2011. While earning his undergraduate degree, Cory worked on the set of several feature films, including Transformers: Dark of the Moon & After Effect. Cory would also worked as a freelance cinematographer, to help pay his way through college.
Corey currently works at Harpo Studios as an Associate Post-Production Coordinator, working on shows like “Oprah’s Next Chapter”, “Oprah’s Lifeclass”, “Iyanla: Fix My Life”, the Emmy-Award winning “Super Soul Sunday”, and “Wanda Sykes Presents: Herlarious.”
How Corey Supports Our Girls in Polished Pebbles
About 4 years ago in the early days of Polished Pebbles I wanted to do a promo video for the organization. I asked around with friends about finding a good videographer, and they referred me to Corey. You can see the video he produced for us back then HERE ,or view it below. And, Corey’s been supporting our work ever since then by helping us get the message out about the great girls, schools, and communities we serve through video. Just through donating small amounts of his time, and his tremendous talent and guidance, he’s made a huge impact on our program, and our ability to properly market our work. What talents, skills, and gifts do you have that you can share with a youth mentoring program in your community? Think about it, and get going with sharing it the community of youth near you!
Our youth deserve our time and talents! Let’s keep sharing!
Kelly
KellyFairTheMentor