Volunteer With Portage Community

Portage Community mentors commit to serving for one academic year from the months of August to the following May. Typically, their duties only require a 5-10 hour commitment each month. This includes check-ins with their mentee, attending events, and meeting with the volunteer resource manager.

The primary duty of a mentor is to provide guidance, wisdom, and encouragement to their mentee. This takes a variety of forms, including in-person meetings, texts, and emails. Additionally, mentors attend Portage Community events alongside their mentee. They also meet with the Volunteer Resource Manager to update them on their experience, as well as attend a six-hour training session at the beginning of the year.

No, you don't! Even as a medical mentor, you don't need to know every single detail about what's going on right now in nursing. The goal of a medical mentor is to be a resource for students to ask questions about your experience as a nurse. Similarly, life mentors don't need to have knowledge of the medical field to be a mentor.

That's okay! Many of our medical mentors will be retired nurses who have been working as nurses for many years. We value your experience first and foremost, and you have a lot to bring to the table even if you haven't had an academic nursing class in some time. Share your experience and wisdom with your mentee and don't worry about knowing the unique ins-and-outs of the different classes.

We hope to assign each mentor only one mentee from the cohort for the academic year. We really want each mentor to focus on investing in one student and build a good relationship with them.

No, you do not. Portage Community requires no financial obligations between mentors and mentees. If your mentee approaches you with a financial need, please pass that on to the Volunteer Resource Manager and we as a program will deal with those requests.