Partners & Pins: AALEAD Mentoring Goes Bowling!

By Tina Ngo, AALEAD Staff
Photos Courtesy of Tina Ngo, AALEAD Staff

This past Saturday, the Asian American LEAD (AALEAD) Mentoring Program held our first ever Bowling Social! Ten of our mentoring pairs gathered at Lucky Strike DC for an afternoon filled with fun, food, and friendship. After introductions were made, youth and mentors laced up their bowling shoes and put their game faces on; it was finally time to begin!

As pairs walked towards their respective lanes, they also engaged in some friendly, competitive banter. Youth enthusiastically praised their mentors’ skills to their peers, while mentors were eager and excited to share a favorite pastime with their mentees (some of whom have never been bowling before!). As mentors helped youth enter their names onto the screens, some pairs set goals for the scores that they wanted to achieve, while others excitedly caught up on each other’s lives.

After about an hour or so of bowling, mentoring pairs regained their energy by chowing down on yummy snacks such as chicken tenders, mac and cheese bites, chips and salsa, and pretzel sticks! Students were eager to begin bowling again after the break and even began to cheer on their fellow mentor-mentee pairs each time someone bowled a spare or a strike. As the Bowling Social came to an end, a strong sense of community could definitely be felt as pairs enjoyed one another’s company and continued to build on each other’s strengths and skills.

Events such as the Bowling Social serve as a great opportunity to not only team build, but also teach our youth that leadership can be comprised of a multitude of things. Sometimes being a leader means speaking in public or leading a larger group, but being a leader can also mean: trying something (like bowling) that you’ve never done before, being persistent and patient when you are learning something new (like bowling) for the first time, or even encouraging and cheering on your fellow peers.

We had an awesome time kicking off the new school year at Lucky Strike DC and look forward to what the rest of the year has in store for all of us. Thanks to all of the mentor-mentee pairs who participated — hope you had a blast and can’t wait to see all of you again soon!

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