Growing the Covenant: Our New Strategic Plan

By Sadiq Ali, MENTOR Maryland | DC Executive Director
Building a movement is hard work. It’s why we   rarely see sustainable movements very often. It takes sustained commitment, patience, a completely unrealistic, unreasonable and zealot-like sense of optimism. It takes people — the unrelenting and unwavering kind. But also high on this list is that it takes strategy. You see, this short list of what it takes to build a movement is only partial because the moments change and require different tools and perspectives. Having recently gone through a process to evaluate and reevaluate our prior strategies and tools brings us to this moment that we couldn’t be prouder of — sharing with you all our strategy and vision for building a movement to support young people.

Plain and simple. And as simple as this premise is, we know it won’t be easy, as nothing worth having or doing ever is. But the other critical step in our journey is to ask the question — who is with us? Who are our people we are going to build this movement with?

As you read our new strategic plan: Growing the Covenant, we want you to both see yourself in it already, but also to ask yourself “how else can I support this movement to support young people?” To be a part of a covenant means to take an oath, a pledge, and to make an undying promise (or die trying to make it so). Our young people deserve this type of fealty and commitment from us. They require us to take them as partners and not just wards. To take them as assets and not just challenges to be solved.

They say that if your dream just includes you or if you can make it a reality by your lonesome, then it is too small. We will tell you, right up front, there is no way our tiny team can pull this off alone. We need you and, more than ever, our young people need you.

And with that, please know this isn’t just our strategic plan, it’s yours — and it’s going to take ALL of us to make this world better for those who come after us (and are here already!).

Read on to learn more about Growing the Covenant: MENTOR Maryland | DC’s 2021-2025 Strategic Plan and how you can get involved!