This year, a Student Mentorship Program at Jackson-Reed pairs seniors with freshman. The program is run by the Student Government Association (SGA) and spearheaded by seniors Kenefere Kamani, who came up with the idea over the summer, and Declan Bianchi. The goal is to help freshmen receive guidance from seniors and support them through their first year at Jackson-Reed.

Through the program, every freshman who signs up is paired with a senior to be their mentor. They meet once a week during lunch to talk and bond. 

“I had the idea that seniors should be allowed to take their freshmen partners with them on off-campus lunch. That way, it doesn’t seem as forced by the school and gives them a better chance to connect,” Bianchi said.

While the program was supposed to start at the beginning of the year, some seniors were not paired with a freshman at that time due to the limited recruitment of freshmen.

“We already had the seniors ready to go, but there wasn’t a ton of advertising on the freshman side,” Bianchi stated. He further explained that the SGA had limited time to work on the program due to students returning and homecoming.

Despite this, Kamani and Bianchi hope to officially launch the program in December, with about 50 seniors and 20-30 freshmen signed up. •