Mentors Care helping students
Mentors Care started with just 25 students and 25 mentors at Midlothian High School in 2009.
Fast forward to 2025, and there are over 900 volunteer mentors serving more than 1,000 students, including several school districts in Johnson County. It exists in 21 high schools, including Cleburne High School.
Mentors Care’ s Johnson County presence also extends to Keene, Venus and Grandview high schools, in addition to 16 other high schools throughout Texas.
The nonprofit organization founded by Dena Petty in 2009 as a Texas nonprofit corporation named Movement Toward a Future, Inc. Everything in the program and what they hope to accomplish is based on what Petty wished she had as a kid growing up in a dysfunctional environment. The goal of Mentors Care is to give students what they need, not only to graduate but to live their lives to their fullest potential.
Petty has worked and created this program from the ground up, learning hard lessons along the way. Now, they are seeing the traction and the impact of Mentors Care growing and becoming an unstoppable force in the lives of so many students and the volunteers who mentor them.
Mentors Care comes to the aid of high school students considered to be susceptible to failing or not graduating from high school because of poor academic performance. They serve school districts in suburban and rural areas where there are little to no resources available to support the overall well-being and academic success of struggling students.
Even students with loving parents and guardians can sometimes get off track. Mentors Care partners with those parents and school administrators to match students with caring mentors to help get them back onto a healthy course. Students without positive adult role models are at real risk of not graduating and often face more difficult futures.
Over the course of eight months, mentors spend about one hour each week with their respective students reviewing grades, going over assignments and assessing strengths and areas for improvement. The mentors are specially trained and equipped with the 24 Talking Points system and
other program materials designed to help students develop healthy self-perception and awareness of the many opportunities that abound in the world around them.
Female mentors work with female students and male mentors with male mentors. Program officials, when possible, strive to match students with mentors of similar interests. Mentors receive training and continued support to help them in their roles.
Students with special circumstances need a little more assistance to succeed academically. For some, it may be that they are hungry, need school supplies, etc. In those instances, the on-campus staff( and mentors) do whatever they can to provide assistance by offering snacks, school supplies, clothing, hygiene items, etc. and connecting students with other community resources that are available.
The majority of students we serve are trying to cope with domestic and emotional hardships on a daily basis in addition to academic struggles. Some of them don’ t even
know where they will sleep at night or if they will get a meal after school, much less, what they will be doing 10 years after graduation.
Once the mentors establish a trusting relationship, they use our curriculum to help students think about their futures after high school. Together they plan out and start taking the necessary steps to achieve student goals.
Mentors Care officials work closely with area employers to provide internship and job opportunities to graduating seniors who choose to go right to work from high school.
For information or to learn how to volunteer, visit mentors. care.
20 Our Children, Our Future