For our project we travel to Hanna Boys Center in Sonoma to mentor disadvantaged, at-risk young men through a variety of activities, mostly involving athletics.

Our project began during our junior year, with the help of our mentor Dave Montano. We were able to volunteer a majority of the Sundays during the summer, so we have developed a close relationship with a handful of the kids there. Many of the kids at Hanna come from broken homes, and are in need of a moral guide in their lives and we hope to provide them with such. Over the thirty or so hours that we have spent at Hanna, we have been able to learn what happened to these kids, and why they’re at Hanna.

Like any other project, ours has unique challenges. For instance, one of the biggest challenges affecting our project is simply being able to relate to the kids. Most of them have been through more in their short lives than any of us combined. With the help of our mentor, we have been able to find certain aspects of the kids’ lives that we can relate with. In addition, our project has rewarded us greatly. Learning about these kids and what they’ve gone through has reasserted the fact that life has been extremely fortunate to us. It has also helped us gain a new perspective on life.

We hope to take the kids to a Sonoma State University baseball game sometime in March, and we are currently working on the plans to accomplish this. Overall, we are very excited about our project and the experiences we have shared with the kids from Hanna.