About Us

Program History

The C.O.O.L mentoring program was developed in September 2016 by Fatemeh Hashemi, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who specializes in working with children, teens, and young adults. The program was developed with the assistance of the National Mentoring Resource Center’s (NMRC) consultant, Jerry Sherk.

Throughout her professional career, Ms. Hashemi witnessed the benefits and impact a positive mentor had on her clients lives. She views a positive mentor/mentee relationship as a preventative measure for disruptive behaviors, an effective way to promote self-compassion and a health self-esteem, and for mentees to have something fun to look forward to. Even though Ms. Hashemi viewed mentoring as a positive resource, she encountered challenges and limitations when attempting to use mentors as a resource in treating clientele from Middle Eastern/ Muslim backgrounds. For this reason, she saw the importance and significance of having the option to offer mentoring to children, teens, and young adults by mentors who were from Middle Eastern/Muslim backgrounds. This lead her to the discovery of the National Mentoring Resource Center (NMRC).

The NMRC is a resource center program that is funded through the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) with the intent to decrease and prevent juvenile delinquency. Through research and evidence based outcomes, the NMRC provides mentoring tools, program and training materials, as well as no-cost training and technical assistance to mentoring practitioners interested in incorporating best practices to support positive outcomes to mentor/mentee relationships.

The purpose and goal of C.O.O.L is to provide children and young adults of Middle Eastern descent, as well as other cultures, with a caring and supportive relationship by a positive role model, to enable compassion for self and others, social adaptability, and healthy long term life style habits. Thus, assisting in the development of positive self-worth and social skills by offering fun outings and engaging interactions to enhance growth in various aspects of one’s development.