This Week's Program: Dakota Koski

Steve Micke introduced our speaker, Dakota Koski, Executive Director of Reach Inc., a mentoring program in Cloquet. Dakota told us about himself and his history with Reach. He was a Jr. Rotarian, attended Camp RYLA and also started volunteering with Reach as a sophomore in high school, mentoring a 5th grade student.

Next he joined the Reach Board of Directors, then became their new Executive Director. Now Reach is going through a big restructuring. They started in 2000 as a small program for professionals to take clients out for social activities. Now it has grown into offering small and large group activities and one to one mentoring with youth. They are planning to hire a second coordinator because of the increase in the number of clients. They do lots of fundraisers and referrals. They used to take mentees from age 5 to 18 and now it is age 8 to 18. Their mission and vision has changed "To provide supportive and meaningful mentoring relationships to the youth of Carlton County."

Next, Dakota gave us paper to participate in an exercise. He asked how many of us had ever had a mentor and only a couple of people raised their hands. So he asked us to draw a circle and put our names in it, then draw satellite circles and put the names of people who had a positive influence on our lives. Wow! We all found out we

had mentors without even realizing it. Thanks, Dakota, for opening up our eyes.