Tad Bartimus learned firsthand nearly twenty years ago how a mentor could change a student’s outlook on writing.

After a successful career as an award-winning journalist, Bartimus and her husband, Dean Wariner, moved moved to Hana, Hawaii, in 1996.

While there, an English teacher asked Bartimus to assist a young student with his junior class essay. The student was in danger of failing the class if he did not complete the assignment Bartimus mentored the student who ended up submitting his story to a writing competition where he won first prize. He also passed the class.

With the help of her husband, Bartimus started Talk Story, Write Story in 1998. The one-on-one mentorship program’s goal was to help financially disadvantaged students write personal essays for college and scholarship applications.

Since 1998, the program has helped around 300 students, including those in Hawaii and Alaska, improve their writing skills and earn college scholarships, including 15 Gates Millennium scholarships.

Bartimus decided to return to her alma mater after receiving a Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute fellowship. Expanding upon her success in Hawaii and Alaska, Bartimus piloted a personal writing workshop with a local newspaper in Columbia.

RJI partnered with the Columbia Daily Tribune and Columbia Public Schools to bring 10 financially challenged students together with 10 volunteer writing coaches. These volunteer mentors help students write and rewrite essays in hopes of winning scholarships to pay for college.

“I’m incredibly grateful to RJI for letting me come here,” she said. “RJI is a place of great innovation. RJI allowed us to come out here and try out this program and we have been able to prove that the program itself is really successful.”

While the duo agreed that the primary goal of the program is to get the students to become better storytellers, the program is more than just editing essays. The one-on-one mentor relationship pushes students to strive harder.

“Mentors become the alter-ego of the student. They give their support, their knowledge, and their encouragement,” Wariner said. “It keeps the students going and it keeps the students energized.”

Bartimus said by the end of the program, students grow to call their volunteer mentors a friend.

“The mentors love them,” she said. “We didn’t expect this kind of bonding.”

Bartimus said resourceful and committed volunteers from the community can serve the same function and take pressure off of teachers and counselors who are already doing a full-time job.

“The hard part now is convincing newspapers, radio stations, tv stations and somebody in every community to adopt this as part of their brand and to bring Talk Story Write Story to their community,” she said.

Bartimus hopes other newspapers and media organizations introduce similar programs to their local communities.

“The importance of this is the fact that it can be exported to any community in the country and it doesn’t cost anything,” she said.

For more information on the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, please visit their homepage. The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute is currently taking fellowship applications for 2016-2017. For more information on a fellowship or how to apply, visit their website.