AT&T, CareerVillage.org Connecting Mentors and Students

AT&T and CareerVillage.org are teaming up to connect mentors and students online.

A mentor’s impact on a young person’s life can be immeasurable – they provide guidance, encouragement and a sense of togetherness. Yet today, 1 in 3 young people will grow up without a mentor.

And for those who do have a mentor, COVID-19 has forced many of those relationships to hit pause while the country navigates the realities of social distancing.

In response, through AT&T’s $10 million Distance Learning & Family Connections Fund, the company is committing more than $500,000 to organizations focused on connecting young people with meaningful mentor relationships – online.

To kick off this part of the Distance Learning & Family Connection Fund, it is teaming up with CareerVillage.org and tapping into some of sports’ most notable athletes to offer advice on topics ranging from how to score a valuable internship to choosing the right major.

Professional golfers Jordan Spieth and Maria Fassi will join influencer Tisha Allyn, Byron Nelson tournament head, John Drago, and executives from AT&T to answer career and mentoring-focused questions submitted through the CareerVillage.org.

Founded to democratize access to career information and advice for underrepresented youth, CareerVillage.org crowdsources answers to students’ questions about careers.

AT&T is also making contributions to help ensure mentoring relationships for our young people persist through this crisis and beyond. A $250,000 contribution will support an innovative collaboration between MENTOR and iCouldBe, which have joined forces to develop the Virtual Mentoring Portal.

The portal offers a safe and monitored digital platform for mentors matched with mentees to continue their relationships while separated due to COVID-19. In addition, AT&T is making a $100,000 contribution to Technovation, an organization that works to help young people become leaders, creators and problem-solvers.

Through this contribution, Technovation is creating a series of virtual mentoring videos that take middle school aged children through the journey of building technology that addresses problems they care about.