Latina College Student Creates National Mentoring Program
By Voxxi News
Stephanie Bravo, a Mexican-American student from Stanford University, has created StudentMentor.org, a free online mentoring program for minority students.
“I didn’t have anybody there to really guide me in what I needed to do through college, let alone what I needed to do to get into professional school,” said Bravo.
To find the support she felt was needed to achieve her education goals, Bravo joined the Stanford University Minority Medical Alliance Medical Mentorship Program as an undergraduate. There she met her mentor, Matthew Goldstein, a non-Hispanic white man from Jewish descent.
Skeptical at first, because she wanted someone she could relate to and who could relate to her, Bravo had originally requested a Hispanic mentor. However, even though Goldstein wasn’t Hispanic, Bravo says he was just what she needed.
“Even though he didn’t experience my background, my troubles, or my life, he could sympathize and empathize,” she said.
Due to the life-changing impact of having a student mentor, Bravo eventually became Mentorship Program Chair of the Latino Medical Student Association. She set up her own mentoring program designed after the Medical Alliance Program, which Stanford student Stephanie Carr says has “60 percent Latino (students), 30 percent Black, 6 percent Asian, and 4 percent Other, though the demographics change yearly.”
While Bravo enjoyed her position immensely, she eventually learned not all students who wanted mentoring were able to access her services.
“He was passionate about serving disadvantaged communities and really wanted to apply to medical school but had no idea how,” she said about a student who wanted to join but couldn’t. “He was a community college student and couldn’t attend our undergraduate mentoring program because it required in-person attendance during times when he had other work and family commitments.”
Realizing there was a number of students being left out from the traditional program, Bravo created StudentMentor.org. Now, in a partnership with the White House, the online mentorship program serves more than 1,000 colleges, and 60 percent of members are from minority groups.
“Through StudentMentor.org’s innovative national mentoring program based on its pioneering technology platform, college students can conveniently find and collaborate with mentors from diverse industries and professions to achieve their academic and career goals,” reads the official program’s website.
The program allows both students and mentors to sign up, view matches, and select who they feel is the most appropriate match for what they are looking for.
“Mentoring played a powerful role in changing the course of my life – I want to make mentorship available to everybody so students can achieve their dreams and become the leaders of tomorrow, with their mentors supporting them every step of the way,” Bravo said.
StudentMentor.org provides low-income, Hispanics and other minority students with an opportunity to experience the benefits of mentorship; however, it is not the only program designed to help aspiring Latino students, or those who are in need of general life guidance.
The Big Brothers Big Sisters program is another community program designed to partner at-risk youth with positive role models. Available in many major cities, the initiative sets a good foundation for sending youth to secondary education where more academic mentorship programs can take over.
This article was first published in Voxxi.
