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You’d think the opportunity to golf at perhaps the city’s fanciest venue in the Concord Country Club would be a major part of the appeal of the Friends Program’s upcoming 18th annual Youth Mentoring Golf Tourney. For instance, we don’t get to golf there regularly (what, our free the nipple demonstration there wasn’t received as well as we’d hoped it would be), so it’d be a good chance for us to squeeze in a round.
But no, helping the Friends Program seems to be reason enough, as evidenced by the fact that many of the people who will be prowling the course next month could do so anytime they want to.
“Being able to golf at an exclusive venue like that is attractive, but a lot of our golfers are actually members already,” said Mark Foynes, development director at the Friends Program. “They don’t need to participate; they can golf there anytime they want. But they choose to golf in this tournament because there are a lot of tournaments in Concord, but this one after 18 years has become one of the premier outings in the greater Concord area.”
The tournament will take place Sept. 14, with registration and breakfast at 8 a.m. followed by a shotgun start at 9 a.m. Last year’s tourney featured 118 players, and Foynes said they already had about 110 registered as of last week, so he expects an even larger turnout this time around.
“It’s always a good time for a great cause,” Foynes said.
That cause, in particular, is the youth mentoring program, probably the most recognizable arm of the Friends Program. Mentors are matched with children – using a process that has produced outstanding match longevity, Foynes said – and spend a few hours a week with that child, often developing a lasting and meaningful bond.
The program’s impact is illustrated by the situation that led to its creation. Rich Maxson was a law clerk in Concord in the early 1970s who one day came across a 5-year-old boy sitting on the curb in underwear and a stained T-shirt outside of his family’s apartment on Monroe Street, then a dangerous area. The boy had no father and didn’t know where his mother was. Maxson told the boy his name and sent him inside to safety – but not before the boy hugged Maxson tightly around the knees.
It was several months later that Maxson received a phone call from the Manchester Police at 3 a.m. They’d found a young boy walking from bar to bar, searching for his mother, and when officers asked if someone could help, the boy gave them Maxson’s name from their meeting months earlier.
Maxson learned the boy’s older brother was a “well-known troublemaker,” and when Maxson helped launch the Friends Program in 1975, he wound up mentoring that older brother, who began taking an interest in sports, improved his grades and graduated.
The program has evolved, now acting as much as a vehicle to open a young person’s eyes to the opportunities he or she can pursue.
“It started out as prevention, but it’s really more of an opportunity program (now),” Foynes said. “We show these kids what opportunities are out there. Over half of these kids go on to some form of post-secondary education, whether that’s a four-year school or a two-year program or even a professional certification.”
And it’s not just the mentee who receives the benefits.
“We have a saying, when you mentor one child, you enrich two lives,” Foynes said, noting that the relationship often lasts well beyond the mentee’s 18th birthday, when they age out of the program. “One thing we’re really proud of is our match longevity. We know anecdotally that a lot of the relationships that begin through our efforts become lifelong or certainly long-term relationships.”
But that’s just one branch of the Friends Program. For 35 years it has been operating the only family shelter in Merrimack County to fight homelessness, a facility that is “functionally at 100 percent occupancy at all times,” Foynes said.
The organization also offers a foster grandparent program, recruiting seniors citizens and placing them in classrooms around the state for a minimum of 15 hours per week, and the RSVP program, which is a volunteer recruitment program that places seniors in nonprofit or public agencies.
Other opportunities include a caregiver program in which volunteers transport housebound seniors to medical and other appointments, and a Bone Builders program in which volunteers lead osteoporosis preventative sessions with seniors.
Anyone interested in sponsorships for the golf tournament, or anyone who wants to volunteer with any of the Friends Program’s programs (there’s a particular need for men who wish to mentor young boys), contact Foynes at 228-7604 or email him at mfoynes@friendsprogram.org.
