2013 Mentor Appreciation Night: The Art of Mentoring

Families doing arts and crafts at Mentor Appreciation NightThis past weekend, we celebrated our annual Mentor Appreciation Night! Held at the City Year Headquarters in Boston, it was an evening of celebrating and honoring our volunteers’ hard work and dedication to empowering youth. The event was filled with artistic decorations and craft activities to embrace the theme, The Art of Mentoring.

Guests spent the evening doodling on butcher paper that covered the tables, posing for pictures taken by Disability Images’ Mark Hunt, and decorating glass bottles with mod podge, tissue paper, glitter, and feathers. All of the bottles had such creative designs that demonstrated all of our participants’ incredible artistic talents!

Future Chefs, a non-profit organization in Boston that prepares urban teens for employment in the restaurant industry, provided dinner for the evening. Guests enjoyed a delicious taco bar, thyme lemonade, and homemade cookies in the shapes of painting easels, guitars, music notes, and the “Autism Speaks” puzzle piece.

We kicked off the award ceremony by honoring our mentors who have been matched for one, two, or three years. Next, we awarded Nora Portillo with the Chris Dunne Peer Leadership Award and Alex Kreiger with the Rayleen Lescay Spirit Award. Award winners received a certificate, a PYD journal, and a colorful PYD t-shirt that reads “Who’s your mentor?”. Lastly, Juan Botero was honored as Mentor of Year. Along with the other prizes, Juan received a beautiful glass vase (made by PYD staff member, Kristin) decorated with pictures of him and his mentee, Eric.

Alex wins the Rayleen Lescay Spirit Award Juan wins the Mentor of the Year Award Nora wins the Chris Dunne Peer Leadership Award

We ended the event with some upbeat music and our participants Matt, Becky, and Chris got the dance party going by hitting the dance floor!

Grooving to the beats Dancing up a storm!

Thank you to Mark and Pat Hunt for photographing the evening and providing us with these incredible pictures. Also, thank you to all who came out to the event! We can’t wait to see everybody again for next year’s Mentor Appreciation Night!

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