July 09, 2019 A Day in the Life of a Friend Being a Friend is not your typical 9 to 5 job. Our Friends clocked 75,924 hours of time spent directly with youth last year. That's over 200 hours every day of intentional mentoring, skill-building, academic support and advocacy for youth across the Portland/Vancouver metro area. On average, a Friend will spend 3.5 hours per week working with each of their youth. Why is this significant, you may ask? Well, a Friend can have anywhere from eight to ten youth in their caseload, meaning a single Friend can spend as much as 35 hours per week, providing direct service to youth. And much of this time is logged after kids get out of school for the day, or even on weekends. When a Friend is not doing that, they might be busy recording services or tracking a youth's progress in our database, checking-in with their supervisor to problem solve a particularly difficult situation, meeting with other Friends in a team setting to plan group outings or enrichment opportunities or even participating in the intense six to eight week observation period where the kindergarteners who face multiple systemic obstacles are selected to be enrolled into the program for the next 12+ years. Being a Friend is definitely not your typical 9 to 5 job. A Friends’ primary objective is to show up and be 100 percent present for their youth each and every time they see them. Take Professional Mentor/Friend Rath, for example. She spends her days balancing precious time with different youth and other duties. Watch the video below to get a behind the scenes look at what A Day in the Life of a Friend is really like.