TOVA celebrates mentors for 'at risk' children

Dinner and high praise for mentors

By Daniella Adler

Issue of January 29, 2010/ 14 Shvat 5770

Mentors at the TOVA organization, college age individuals who regularly volunteer their time to be with at-risk teens and younger students, received recognition for their work and an elegant dinner at King David last Thursday in honor of National Mentoring Day.

The evening, which was sponsored by an anonymous donor, began with an address by Dr. Norman Blumenthal, one of the founders of TOVA, who praised the mentors and spoke about the impact that they can have by acting as a “friend, a guide, and a role model.” Blumenthal riffed off Shakespeare’s Othello, who, at the end of the eponymous tragedy, lamented that he “loved not wisely but too well.”

The ideal mentor, according to Blumenthal, should allow their charge to be loved, “not too well, but wisely.”

Yehuda Klinkowitz, the director of TOVA, in an interview after the event stressed that the organization’s mission is to be “proactive, not reactive.” Children can sometimes be lost in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, he explained, and busy parents can sometimes come home exhausted, unable to be fully present through the tumult of childhood and adolescence.

“It’s come home, eat dinner, a bath and to bed,” said Klinkowitz of his relationship to his own children. “By the time I come home at night, one of us is falling asleep — and it’s usually me.”

There are children in many family situations, he continued, such as single parent households, blended families, and households with financial problems, who may demand more care and attention than a distracted parent can provide.

“Every successful adult has had a mentor in their life, whether that mentor was a teacher or a parent or an older sibling,” explained Dr. Debbie Dienstag, a pediatrician and a board member of the organization. “What TOVA provides is that role model that may not always be available to every child.”

The event concluded with a panel discussion featuring local community leaders, including Dr. Dienstag, Dr. Noam Weinberg and Rabbi Yaakov Bender of Yeshiva Darchei Torah in Far Rockaway. They answered a variety of questions about mentorship, including how to talk to teenagers about drug use and promiscuity.

Samantha Fox, who recently completed a degree in social work and who has been a mentor with TOVA for three years, said that the satisfaction she derives from the work is “tremendous.”

“I have helped girls get through some hard times,” she said.