Dallas County Living Well Magazine Spring 2015 | Page 20

Mentoring:
One-on-One Relationships with Generational Impact

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By Melanie Hess

alking around Dixon Circle, a neighborhood in South
Dallas that is often referred to as the poorest, most run
down and crime ridden part of the city, Carly Pickens,
director of the Champions of Hope mentoring program,
ran into one of her student’s fathers.

“He mentioned his son had a Champions of Hope mentor
and continued to share how much he appreciated that, and
how good it was for his son,” Pickens said. “Then he said,
‘If me and my friends had had mentors like that when we
were growing up, this place would be very different’.”

not entirely positive the program would succeed. “We had
$1,000 in the bank the day I quit my job,” Pickens said, as
she described the nonprofit’s early days. “It was just me, a
computer and a bank account.”

Although comprehending the power of positive role models is more expected for adults, Pickens said the children,
referred to by the organization as protégés, see the significance of having a mentor as well. She recalls the day
10-year-old South Dallas student Jordan* chose to step
away from a fist fight because he recognized who she was
and wanted to learn more about having a mentor. Just moments before a physical battle would have ensued between
him and another child, Jordan* realized that he was standing mere yards away from Pickens. As she began encouraging him to make the right decision, Jordan turned away
from the fight, and the two drew closer in proximity. Pickens
remembers the first thing the fourth grader exclaimed when
they came face to face: “Hey! When do I get my mentor?”

In 2007, while working as an admissions representative for
the University of Missouri in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex,
Pickens began volunteering with children in South Dallas
through a group at The Village Church. Over time, she began informally mentoring a young woman who lived nearby.

It’s stories like Jordan’s* and the student’s father she met
that day in Dixon Circle that leave Pickens with no doubt
that she made the right choice, risking, among other things,
her career, time and financial investment to establish and
grow Champions of Hope… now 153 mentors strong.

The Early Days
Although she believes she was called to serve the South
Dallas area, Pickens admits, in the beginning, she was
18

NORTH DALLAS Living Well Magazine | SPRING 2015

Relating and Forming Roots

Soon enough, the college education major and black studies minor, began to realize a renewed passion for urban
life, and for children with difficult backgrounds, a situation
in which she holds first-hand knowledge. “I grew up in a
broken home in rural Missouri,” Pickens explained. “My
dad had substance abuse issues, and my parents divorced
when I was still young; but my mom, she was very stable.”
Although she does not claim to have endured the same level
of hardship as some of the students she works with, Pickens
said she is grateful that her upbringing enables her to relate.
By painting an image of a home life that is less common in
middle-class suburbia, Pickens can draw similarities between
many of the childrens’ lives in South Dallas and her own.
“Families in South Dallas often have consistent mothers, but
fathers are typically in and out of the home, or they are entirely absent,” she noted. “I know what that’s like. I also had