Best,

Kori Redepenning, Director

Colleen Holohan, Member Development Manager

Paul Bologna, Legislative & Communication Associate

Amanda Trask, Massachusetts Promise Fellow, serving at the Plymouth County District Attorney's Office, works closely with Brockton's Promise, a coalition that also promotes access to the five promises (Caring Adults, Safe Places, Healthy Start, Effective Education and Opportunities to Help Others) to the youth in the community. Amanda serves on the Caring Adults team, and played a key role in the planning and overall success of the 4th Annual Mentor Recruitment Rally, held on January 26, 2012 at the Shaw's Conference Center in Brockton.

This event is meant to bring awareness to the mentoring cause, honor those who are already doing exceptional mentoring and inspire new mentors to become involved and make a difference in Brockton. Additionally, the community also celebrated being named one of the 100 Best Communities for Young People by America's Promise Alliance.

To make this event a true success, Amanda was involved in a number of activities on the various sub-committees created by the Caring Adults team. As a sponsor liaison, she actively recruited and supported event sponsors such as United Way of Greater Plymouth County. Additionally, she collaborated with others to change the nomination criteria and voting rubric for the Exceptional Mentor Award to include both a youth and adult category. This allowed mentors in the community to be recognized by either the youth they mentor or by their colleagues who could attest to the great work that they do. Amanda also played a key role in working with various subcommittees to get nominations from organizations, create a mentoring video to be debuted at the event, design and decorate the venue, organize mentor resource tables, and other specific tasks on the night of the rally.

Amanda Trask showed passion and dedication for the mentoring work that she does on the Caring Adult team. As a result of the rally, 25 potential mentors were recruited between 8 different mentoring programs. Amanda believes that "A mentor makes a difference by investing in the life of a young person and when you choose to mentor not only will you change the life of a young person, you will change too!"