NEWS

Take Stock mentoring 'life-changing' for student, mentor

PAMELA McCABE
PMCCABE@NEWS-PRESS.COM

Frankie Nater always wanted to go to college, but the Cape Coral student didn’t know how realistic that dream would be.

Take Stock in Children mentor Jonathan Romine has kept in contact with his first mentee, Frankie Nater, who is now a senior at Florida Gulf Coast University.

That all changed when a Mariner High School guidance counselor gave him an application for the Take Stock in Children scholarship program.

Through this mentor-based scholarship program, at-risk students from low-income families in Lee County would sign a contract to maintain good grades in school, stay drug and crime free and meet regularly with their mentor.

If successful at keeping this promise, these students will be handed a four-year scholarship for college when they graduate from high school.

Nater jumped at the opportunity.

But neither he — nor his mentor Jonathan Romine — ever realized just “how much it would change his life.”

Creating a lasting bond

The two first met during the contract signing ceremony, where Nater “said all but three words” to his mentor, who was also new to the concept.

“He was shy. It is hard — a new person coming into their life,” explained Romine, who said that because of certain circumstances in their lives, most of these kids come “prepared to be let down” by adults.

But soon the two were meeting every other week, and, eventually, Nater began to come out of his shell as the two bonded over pop culture and sports.

Romine, who was 28 when the two were matched together, became an impartial party to the teen’s day-to-day challenges — someone who wasn’t a parent or a teacher that could encourage, give advice and bounce around ideas with.

And one of the things Romine did was offer the teen his cell phone number, telling him to call it whenever he needed to talk — day or night.

“He was always there for me,” Nater said. “He always answered. He was always there. I appreciated that.”

Today, Nater is 21, and is pursuing a degree in business management from Florida Gulf Coast University. When he isn't in school, he's working to help support his family.

Even though he graduated from the Take Stock mentoring program, he still keeps in touch with Romine, who calls the youngster “part of the family.”

And that connection is possible because Romine made the decision to give back.

How it all started

When he was 28, Romine, the director of landscape architecture with a company called EnSite, was looking for a way to give back to the community, ideally something involving Lee County’s at-risk youth.

That's when a friend invited him to a Rotary meeting. The day’s speaker was Marshall Bower, the CEO and president of the Foundation for Lee County Public Schools.

Bower spoke to the crowd about the importance of mentoring, pitching the need for people in the business community to sign on with its Take Stock in Children initiative.

Romine said he was drawn to the program because of its structure, its use of metrics and being able to see a “tangible” result from the work.

That reward — of helping a student succeed in high school, graduate and go onto college — is “something kids, especially at-risk kids, could latch onto and see this as an opportunity,” Romine said.

“I was hooked,” he said.

Today, 36-year-old Romine serves on the board for the Foundation for Lee County Public Schools, is an advocate for giving back to the community and is meeting regularly with his fourth mentee — a Cape Coral High School sophomore.

Since it was created in 1995, Take Stock has awarded 670 scholarships — totally at about $10 million — to local students, the foundation reported. In the 2014-15 school year, it reported that 65 scholarships worth $608,000 were handed out to the program’s graduates.

One of the success stories is Nater, a first-generation college student, who is nearing graduation from FGCU. His dream is to one day manage a baseball team, with hopes of earning a championship ring.

Without a mentor and the Take Stock program, Nater said, “I don’t know where I would be right now.”

That feeling is mutual, said Romine, who called the Take Stock program “much more than just being a mentor." He said it gives students an opportunity to not let “their situation define who they are or become.”

“The biggest thing it really emphasized was the value of being involved with our youth and how important it is," Romine said. "If you break the cycle with one student, then we’ve been successful.”

Connect with this reporter on Twitter: @NP_pstaik