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Several mentoring programs have been operating in Marshall County for a while. Those offer positive role models to children who wouldn’t otherwise have them.

But now people can go to one web site to fill out an application to volunteer for all those organizations.

The site: www.mentormarshall.org,
is up and running. Anyone who wants to volunteer to work with children may apply online. The county district attorney’s office, using the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center, will conduct a background check and decide whether the applicant should be approved to work with kids.

Diana Turner directs Mentor Marshall, which started in 2004 at DAR Elementary School and grew into a county-wide program. When she learned that the state attorney general’s office would no longer do background checks on her volunteers, she called county district attorney Steve Marshall to ask where she could get the money for that.

That was the best phone call she could have made. Mentoring has been close to Mr. Marshall’s heart since his first year at the University of North Carolina, where he worked with the Little Buddy program and eventually ran it on campus.

Mr. Marshall contacted the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center and got permission to put together the web site. “How are we as a community going to respond to help these children have a greater future? We have the shared vision that mentoring children matters,“ Mr. Marshall said.

Rodney Hampton, Snead College athletic director and basketball coach, asked his team to eat lunch regularly at an elementary school. He said the event changed the men more than the children.

“We stop after each session at the elementary school and talk about what it meant, what they found out about the children and themselves. I want to put our student athletes in a situation to think beyond themselves,“ he said. “There were 5 of us growing up in a single-parent home,“ Coach Hampton said. “I’ve always been grateful to the people who took time with us. You can’t measure what a great role that played in my life.“

Joan and Doyle Parker of Albertville have mentored 2 children at Douglas.

“We were put there to help those children, but they actually helped us,“ Mr. Parker said.

Proud as grandparents, they passed around artwork done by a 7-year-old girl, bragging about how smart she is. “I’ve always said that people don’t always remember what you said, but they always remember how you made them feel,“ Mrs. Parker said.

Rhonda Walker, director of Big Brothers/Big Sisters, said she offers 2 programs. In the community-based program, the mentor and child schedule their own activities, such as fishing or gardening. In the site-based program, mentors go into the Albertville or Guntersville school to eat lunch with a child, read with him or otherwise spend time with him.

“We’ve worked with Big Brothers/Big Sisters,“ Guntersville superintendent Andy Lee said. “We have so many children with so many needs, and this fits like a glove.“ Boaz schools have a separate mentoring program.

"They can't function in the workplace if they don't know how to do those things," said Stan Brown, a longtime bank executive who is now business marketing education and co-op coordinator for Hueytown High School.

Brown and other Birmingham area teachers geared up for the rollout at Spain Park High School in Hoover, one of two local training sites. The other was Hewitt-Trussville High School in Trussville.

The certification is already available in two-year colleges, and a handful of high schools have adopted the certification on their own, said Gerry Moses, an education specialist with the Alabama Department of Education. Now, the department has partnered with the Governor's Office of Workforce Development to roll out the certification program to high schools statewide.

To earn certification, students must take WorkKeys, standardized tests developed by ACT that award certifications in three levels - bronze, silver and gold. To prepare students for the test, schools will get KeyTrain, computer software that assesses students, provides job profiles listing which skill levels are required in each area for a given occupation, and an online curriculum to help students raise their skill levels to meet their goals.

"One thing that corporate America is saying is that kids that are getting out of college aren't prepared to work," Moses said.

The certification program will be available to high schools with some kind of cooperative education or other work-based learning program, he said.

Educators Thursday learned to use the new software in a hands-on seminar conducted live though the state's ACCESS distance learning program.

Carol Easterling, career-technical supervisor for Chilton County Schools, said the certification program will let employers know students have the skills they need on the job rather than just a diploma. With the economy the way it is, Easterling said, "people are realizing the importance of careers now, and not just academics."

Forty-two states are adopting either the National Career Readiness Certificate or a state-level alternative, according to Office of Workforce Development literature.