We wanted to devote some seriously creative time to figure out how best to bring mentorship to Hanford.  So twenty folks came together at the Sleeping Lady in Leavenworth, WA to develop a mentorship community framework to recruit and sustain the presence of young people focused on Hanford cleanup.

The Mentorship Forum provided fertile ground for experimenting with techniques to involve young people. We dedicated an entire night to creating an “Out-of-the-Box Evening with Hanford,” where participants stopped talking about all the fun things we could do and put their creativity into action, using games, performance, program design, and prizes to create an incredibly memorable Hanford evening.  We played Hanford Jeopardy and Pictionary with two teams in fierce competition; performed a play called “Slaying the Tank Waste Dragon,” in which the young hero learns to ask for help to influence cleanup; held a haiku contest; and talked by the fire and played games long into the night.

We came out of the Forum with a path forward, strengthened relationships, and lots of ideas for making Hanford more accessible and fun.

By: Liz Mattson