This fall, sophomore Matthew Karten started a new GOAL program to provide aid to students with difficulty in their home lives or academics.

Success through Opportunity leading to Accountability and Respect, or SOAR, is a one-on-one mentorship initiative for struggling students at Horizon Alternative High School, according to Karten.

“We have 20 kids or so who are typically struggling academically, or who don’t have great home lives,” Karten said. “They have often been overlooked, so we try to build positive relationships with them, which may mean that we can help them academically, but also by trying to connect them in the community — for example, helping them to get jobs.” 

Karten started the program after teachers from Horizon Alternative School asked Associate Dean of Men Jeffery Rogers to come talk to students about motivation and responsibility, according to Rogers. 

For many teens at Horizon Alternative High School, it is their last chance to graduate, Rogers said. The mentorship of older students helps to hold them accountable not only to their academic work but to themselves. He added that it is impactful for a young person to have someone to connect with them. 

“You would be surprised when someone comes along to tell one of them that they have a greater destiny, that their lives mean something, when they have been told that they will never amount to anything,” Rogers said. 

Six Hillsdale College students volunteer for the SOAR program. Karten said he hopes to be a good influence in the lives of teens through SOAR. 

“Ideally, we just want to see them succeed because they have potential that is not being realized,” Karten said.

Warren Miller, a teacher at Hillsdale High School, said the program will help to provide better outreach to students.

“I want to find ways for my students to succeed,” Miller said. “Each kid has different needs and ways to relate to people. It is really beneficial for students to have a mentor, a friend, or a confidante, just to have another shoulder to lean on.”

According to Miller, volunteers also benefit from new perspectives they encounter.

“An interesting side benefit is that for the first time, the college students who volunteer are meeting students from totally different backgrounds,” Miller said. “It offers lots of positive reality checks for them.”

Rogers said the leaders of the program hope to see the students in SOAR graduate and move on to jobs, higher education, or trade school.

“We’re trying to reach one kid at a time,” Rogers said. “We want them to know that they can rise above their problems, and that their lives have value.