Dedicated hours spent with the same child every week until that child graduates from high school. That is a Friend's job description, and it is close to the whole of it.

Friends go beyond the traditional volunteer model as trained, paid professional youth mentors, each committed to one child for 12+ years, no matter what, from transitional kindergarten through high school graduation. The hours land in five places: a school, a car, our Clubhouse, somewhere out in San Joaquin County, and a family's front door.

Crystal, one of our Friends (professional mentors), spends part of her week in classrooms. She talks with teachers so that what happens at school and what happens in her sessions pull in the same direction. School is part of what a Friend does, not a separate program. Some hours happen in a car, driving between a school, a home, and our Clubhouse in the Cort Tower downtown.

A lot of the week is spent at the Clubhouse. It is just over two thousand square feet, with a secured entrance and controlled access, interior doors that lock, window sensors, and monitored fire escapes. Visitors are escorted. Every activity in the building is observable and interruptible, and every Friend has completed a background check and training. There is a calming corner too, with soft lighting and low stimulation, for a child who needs to sit somewhere quiet a while before rejoining everyone else.

Ruby* will try a word out loud with Crystal that she would not try in front of a room. She sounds it out, misses it, and goes at it again, and nothing about the hour depends on how quickly that happens. Crystal remembers which words were hard last week, so Ruby does not spend the first ten minutes explaining herself to anybody.

Saturdays are out in San Joaquin County. A park, a ballgame, a movie that costs a dollar. Friends carry a monthly stipend to spend on and with the youth they support, separate from what they are paid, and it has gone toward backpacks, school clothes, and afternoons like those.

The front door is the part people do not expect. Through our family engagement fund, a Friend puts together games and snacks and leaves them with a family for an evening the Friend takes no part in. Caregivers are doing the hardest work here. A Friend is someone steady alongside them, and that is our two-generation approach in practice.

The 12 years is the part that is hard to fund. Most of the adults who pass through a childhood are there for a season, and then a new season starts. Crystal will be at that table in March, and the March after that, and when Ruby is in middle school.

Which is why Ruby can afford to miss a word. There is no version of this where she runs out of time with Crystal.

Crystal is one of three. Chad and Tyerell are each in a week of their own right now, their own classrooms, their own Saturdays, their own front doors. Different youth. Same job. Same 12 years.

Friends of the Children – Stockton is a growing chapter, and every hour of those weeks is a paid hour somebody here decided to fund. If you want another child in Stockton to have a week like this one, your gift is what pays for it.

*name changed