Twenty years ago, Will Green remembers taking the big leap to start his non-profit, Mentoring Positives, an east side organization that mentors vulnerable youth to become productive members of their community, named from the initials of his beloved mother, Muriel Pipkins, who passed away from breast cancer at the young age of 46. Green, a native of Gary, Indiana, created Mentoring Positives to mentor the youth in the Madison community, specifically the Darbo/Worthington neighborhood.
“I think after losing my mom to breast cancer, and going through that, I just got on a mission to find a new kind of way to live my life and take ownership of my time back,” Green, the executive director of Mentoring Positives Inc., tells Madison365. “I think one of our most valuable assets we have as individuals is our time and how we spend it.
“What’s driving a lot of this work that I do was the pain and loss of my mom and being able to give back and honor her in her name in that way is just something magnificent,” he adds.
Mentoring Positives will host its 20-year anniversary with a special event at the Goodman Community Center’s Brassworks building tonight featuring actor Ajani Carr as keynote speaker. WKOW anchor Brandon Taylor will emcee the event and DJ Fusion from 93.1 JAMZ will be the deejay for the night.
“The hook is the key.” That’s been Green’s slogan for Mentoring Positives, an innovative, referral-based mentoring program that works directly with kids and families in a variety of ways in the Darbo/Worthington area and beyond.
“I truly believe we have impacted many lives, and even in the way kids move in this city. Two decades of work, I know that has impacted the city in a positive way and that we’ve saved this city a lot of money by giving kids the opportunity to connect to positive things,” Green says.
“It’s a great experience right now to have been doing this for 20 years and have these kids able to come up to me and tell me what it all has meant to them,” he adds.
(Photo by A. David Dahmer)
Last year, Green opened Muriel’s Place at 2844 E. Washington Ave., a storefront on the ground floor of the newly-built Ella’s Apartments (the former site of Ella’s Deli) where community members can dine in and eat pizza (and other foods) made by Mentoring Positives students.
“Even today, 20 years later, I just continue to walk in this life in her name, Muriel Pipkins’ name, and let her know how proud she was of me and my two younger brothers, her boys, and all of us giving back to the community in a way that makes the world better a place for our kids,” he says. “Those kids are planting the seeds and really allowing those seeds to grow and have a better world than what we have right now.”
(Photo by A. David Dahmer)
Tonight’s Mentoring Positives 20th Anniversary Celebration will be a chance to honor community members with an award in the name of Green’s mother.
“Two Muriel Pipkin Awards will be presented to [CLIMB USA President] Bob Wynn and Uniek, a home decor company from Waunakee,” Green says.
“We will have appetizers and music. It’s going to be fun. We are trying to raise $50,000 that night.”
The event is sold out but community members who want to help support the cause are encouraged to click here to donate. So far, over $11,000 has been raised.
“It’s been an incredible 20 years being in the game and being in the Darbo/Worthington neighborhood. I remember being in the Salvation Army, our little office over there on Rethke [Ave.],” Green says. “The 20th Anniversary Celebration will be a chance for people to hear our story. It’s just amazing to have these individuals that I started working with when they 10 or 11 years old and now they have grown up and become these incredible adults. So people will get a chance to meet these individuals.”
Over the years, Mentoring Positives has been innovative with its young people helping them to create their own salsa, their own pizza and start their own restaurant.
“I would never have guessed and I would have never thought that something like this would be happening all in the entrepreneurial spirit that we sit here today … to take a concept and make it into reality and still be here 20 years,” Green says.
The 20th anniversary will be a night to remember the past and also look forward to the future as Green says he wants to have a community center location to house his youth programming. Tonight will be a night to let the community know more about Mentoring Positives, Green adds, and show pictures of young people in the past and catch up with what they are up to now.
“And we are going to talk about what may happen in the future, too,” Green says. “We have had great community support over the years and for that I am thankful and I’m hoping to see that continue at the celebration event. It’s a pretty big accomplishment and I can’t wait to celebrate it. The crazy thing is that even though it has been 20 years, I feel like we’re just getting started.”
