Teammates Mentoring of Lincoln announces incentives to recruit mentors

Tom Osborne, Co–Founder of Teammates Mentoring that began here in Lincoln, has had a busy week with the program. After Wednesday’s 2019–2020 school year kick off, he is making an extra push to get more mentors involved.

“Our goal is to grow to 12,000 matches in the next year and a half…so that’s a pretty big goal but we’ve been growing rapidly, we’re now in 5 states,” Osborne said.

Osborne said Teammates had 10,200 matches last year, 90 percent of them being here, in Nebraska. 

“I’d like to compliment the people of Nebraska, and Iowa and Kansas and South Dakota because we have tremendous response from people here, they want to serve and have a strong sense of community service,” he said.

Although the program is seeing success, there are still children on the wait list to receive a mentor match. The program is now offering prizes for those who sign up and become a mentor between August 1st and September 1st.

The first prize is airline tickets for two and a three night stay anywhere in the continental United States donated by Travel and Transport. The second prize is VIP tickets to the Teammates gala and the opportunity to meet NBA star Dwayne Wade and his Omaha–native, movie–star wife, Gabrielle Union. The final prize is a “swag bag” with a variety of prizes and merchandise.

Eddie Brown was also speaking on behalf of recruitment at the announcement at Memorial Stadium Friday. Brown was one of the original 22 children who were given a Nebraska football player mentor in the first year of the program, and continued on to have 2 more mentors.

Brown spoke on his successes in college and his career, largely giving credit to the teammates program. After becoming a mentor himself, he saw the need for more mentors. 

“When I meet with my mentee at his school, his friends will tell me ‘I wish I had a mentor.’ Talk about heart break,” Brown said, with tears in his eyes. 

Before ending his speech, Brown gave an emotional plea to encourage others to join the program as mentors as well.

“As the African proverb says, ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ and with that I ask you. . .won’t you be part of that village. And help mentor a child. With the teammates mentoring program,” Brown pleaded.

The prizes are only available to those who sign up and are eligible to be mentors between August 1st and September 1st.

For more information on how to sign up, you can visit the teammates website.