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Princess-Joy Williams and Ricardo Peguero are two of more than 1,000 city high school students who are paired up with a mentor through "iMentor," a program which has matched more than seven thousand students with professionals.

"Mentor means to me somebody I can look up to," says Williams.

"Mentor means to me someone who helps you with things and whatever you need help with they can be there for you," says Peguero.

iMentor was started 10 years to provide a way for busy professionals to mentor to students from low-income communities. The pairs stay connected through weekly e-mails and text messaging.

"This is one of the most rewarding elements of anything I do, and I think the other 1,000 mentors would agree that we get as much out of it as the mentees do," says mentor Antonia Townsend.

Prospective mentors are screened, trained and matched with a mentee with similar interests and goals. Townsend has been Williams's mentor for the past three years.

"Antonia helped me build my confidence, she helped me get more into my school work," says Williams.

"She sort of saw it as a process to get through and increasingly as we talk about it she's seeing it as a useful tool," says Townsend.

The mentors and mentees meet once a month at the iMentor Center and together attend college events and participate in group activities. The mentees can visit their mentors' work sites.

Gordon McKemie is Peguero's mentor, and both do all they can to enrich the experience.

"He sometimes leaves his job just to come to an event or just to meet me and then he'll go to work right after, back to work and finish what he has to do," says Peguero. "Sometimes it will be 10 o'clock at night."

"Part of my responsibility and my challenge is to be something that they don't have in their life otherwise," says McKemie. "They probably wouldn't text with their teacher but they probably wouldn't get college advice from their friends either."

Like most of the mentees, Williams is the first in her family to go to college. Peguero is only the second college student in his family.

McKemie says helping Peguero get into college has taught him what's important.

"No matter what happens with your stock portfolio or what happens professionally to you, you know that you have had an impact on a student's life," says McKemie.

So, for making an impact on the lives of thousands of students, the mentors from iMentor are our New Yorkers of the Week.

If you'd like to nominate someone to be NY1's New Yorker of the Week, send an email describing their qualifications to: nyer@ny1.com or mail a letter to:
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New Yorker of the Week
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