Ryan Stirling for the Mass Mentoring Partnership 2012 Boston Marathon Team

For the past 2 years, I have volunteered my time as a mentor for Stand & Deliver. Stand & Deliver is a one-on-one mentoring program where students are bused from campuses throughout Lawrence Public Schools to local companies to meet with their mentors once a week for an hour and a half. Lawrence Schools are amongst the most under-privileged in Massachusetts. Most children live below the poverty level and there is an alarming high school dropout rate, nearing 50%.

Every Tuesday afternoon, I spend time with Johanna, a senior at Lawrence High School. Last year, I had the great opportunity to mentor Eddie. Eddie has since graduated and is now attending college at UMASS Lowell. Eddie and I still talk and try to meet up once per month. I'm very thankful for the opportunity to make a difference in Johanna’s and Eddie's life and help them reach their goals.

Mass Mentoring Partnership is the only statewide organization solely dedicated to strategically expanding quality youth mentoring in Massachusetts. It is an umbrella organization for more than 190 mentoring organizations supporting 23,000 youth in mentoring relationships across the state. Stand and Deliver is one of those great organizations it supports.

Stand & Deliver and Mass Mentoring Partnership need funding and anything you could donate would be greatly appreciated. Donating through this website is simple, fast and totally secure.

Thank you for your support -- and don't forget to forward this to anyone who you think might want to donate too!

Over the past year, I have gotten into running. It's something that I have grown to enjoy very much. Last year, on April 17, 2011, one day before the 2011 Boston Marathon, I was running my first 5k. Over the subsequent months, I have trained and run longer and longer races culminating with the Philadelphia Marathon on November 20th. I finished the race and it is one of my greatest accomplishments. I now have a new goal - to raise $4,000 for Mass Mentoring Partnership and beat my time from the Philadelphia Marathon.

I post all of my runs to Runkeeper. Track my running and keep me honest.

http://runkeeper.com/user/ryanstirling/profile