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One of the cornerstones of the CCYP’s Mentor Exchange program is that it gives participants an opportunity to hone their professional skills with the guidance and support of a mentor.
The program does so while stressing the importance of giving back to one’s community, allowing each mentee to choose a cause important to them. For Lauren Rodriguez, there was little question of what charity she would choose – HAC’s Angel House shelter in Hyannis.
“Angel House pulled on my heartstrings,” she said at the end of April when she dropped off a $300 donation along with some diapers to the shelter. In January, when she started the Mentor Exchange program, Rodriguez had read a story HAC’s Laura Reckford had written for the online magazine Cape Cod Wave about the positive impact the shelter had on her friend’s fiancé Darby Lyons when he was a teenager. “I wanted to do something that could help.”
HAC has not only helped Lyons, it helped Rodriguez, who recently took the agency’s First-Time Homebuyer Workshop. “I just bought a house,” she said, crediting HAC for preparing her for becoming a homeowner on Cape Cod. And so she thanked the agency the best way she knew how – dedicating her time and energy to raising funds to support HAC’s work.