In this season of giving, we find ourselves buying extra boxes of pasta to tuck into a shopping bag full of nonperishables headed to the People to People feeding program.

We search our closets for the winter coat our children barely wore as they shot up six inches over the season, nurtured by good nutrition and a solid home environment. We clean it and give it to such groups as Nyack Homeless Project, hoping to warm a child from winter's cold.

We search for safe toys to give as agencies worry about lead content and safety recalls.

Yet there is more we can do to nurture young Rocklanders in need.

This year, consider giving youngsters a role model - you. Mentoring a child is a gift of confidence and connectedness. It is a way to build up a child whose life circumstances add pressures that can tear them down.

In Rockland, various opportunities exist to mentor.

Adults Caring for Teens Inc. offers mentors for young people - no matter if they've had run-ins with the law or problems with the schools. The nonprofit was scraped together a couple years ago by Penny Jennings, who discovered that sometimes the trouble that teens had gotten into froze them out of mentoring programs that they so desperately needed.

Mentoring, Jennings explained to the Editorial Board, is a gift for all participants.

"A farmer, when they sow a seed and then they see a harvest, what joy," she said. "For every hour, minute spent with a child, (mentors) can see the improvements . . . the reward is you see the fruits of your labor."

A recent national study on the Big Brothers Big Sisters program quantifies the value of a mentor: Young girls and boys who had been meeting with a mentor for at least a year were 46 percent less likely to use drugs, 27 percent less likely to consume alcohol, 33 percent less likely to be violent and 52 percent less likely to skip school. They also were more likely to earn better grades.

Opportunities abound in Rockland to create a bond with a young person. Newer programs are under way. Rockland Omega Academy has been holding group educational and social mentoring for boys of color. Up to 20 youngsters come, said Dennis McGloster, president of the Xi Lambda Lambda chapter of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, which runs ROAD. The organization is now readying one-on-one mentoring. The East Ramapo Phone Friends has senior volunteers, through Retired and Senior Volunteer Program of Rockland County, who call a child after school a couple times a week to hear about her day.

This holiday season, donate food, coats, toys. Then make a resolution to offer a continuing bond to a child in need, as a mentor.

This article was provided by: The Journal News