Berkeley Community Scholars bridges the opportunity divide for Berkeley youth living in the lowest income bracket by providing scholarships, college success advising, and community mentors. Our program allows our scholars to obtain a bachelor’s degree, social capital, and limited financial debt. We are currently recruiting mentors for our 2021 scholarship recipients.
Why Mentor?
Mentors are valuable resources to our scholars. They inspire and facilitate academic, career, and personal achievements. 80% of our scholars are the first generation attending college and desiring a professional career. Our mentors provide the roadmap and social capital for our students to visualize and plan for meeting their goals.
Mentor Requirements
We ask our mentors to commit to at least 2 years as a mentor. Additional years of support will be encouraged based on mentor/mentee desire and impact.
We expect that each mentor will:
- Be a college graduate or equivalent professional in their field of work
- Have a minimum of 2 face-to-face meetings*
- Connect with your Scholar at least once a month during the school year (via email, phone call, Skype, etc)
- Attend Match Meeting with Scholar and College Success Advisor
We also encourage our mentors to:
- Attend Scholarship Award Ceremony (June), Summer Orientation (June),
- Scholar/Mentor Mixer (May), Care Package Party (Nov.), and Mentor
- Appreciation Brunch (Jan.)
- Group outings planned by scholars and BCS staff
*Any face-to-face or in-person events will be remote until public health protocols permit otherwise.
How to Get Started
- Attend a mentor information session. Find a list of upcoming sessions here.
- Fill out the Mentor Interest Form
- College Success Advisor Linda Osuorji will schedule a Zoom interview
- If we decide to move forward, you will be asked to submit two references
- For the safety of our scholars, we ask all potential mentors to be cleared by a background check.
If you have questions, please contact our College Success Advisor, Linda Osuorji, at linda@berkeleyscholars.org or by calling (510) 900-9541.
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