Program for October 30, 2025: Matthew Garcia, Windsor County Mentors.

Matthew was born in North Carolina but headed to New England as soon as he heard about it. He graduated from Dartmouth College and subsequently moved to New York City, where he worked in the publishing industry for many years. In 2003, Matthew moved to Vermont and became a lawyer after a period of time. When Matthew decided he no longer wanted to be a lawyer, he dedicated himself to the nonprofit world, working as executive director of the Spark Community Center for many years and then as executive director of Windsor County Mentors, the position he still holds today. 

Matthew started off by talking about ancient Greece, which gave us philosophy, democracy, and Homer. Homer wrote the Odyssey and the Iliad. Matthew‘s favorite character from the Iliad was Cassandra, who was able to tell the future, but was believed by nobody. In the Odyssey saga, the Greeks come to Odysseus and want him to go to war with them against Troy. He initially refused, but they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse and finally agreed. Before going, Odysseus asked Mentor to watch out for Tellus his son. In ancient Greece, Mentor was recognized as a trusted wise community leader. He is the source of our word “mentor.”

Windsor County Mentors was founded 54 years ago to help adolescents in trouble and to help them have better lies. It provides one-on-one adult adolescent mentoring. Mentors are with their mentees either on Saturdays or in school or both. Windsor County Partners serves all of Sullivan County, New Hampshire, and the Kearsarge area, as well as Windsor County as the locus of its mentoring. Matthew has a staff of only five, and he is the sole full-time employee. His agency has a budget of $180,000 and fundraises the majority of that. The communities that receive mentoring services will typically provide some funds, and the state of Vermont does as well.

Windsor County Partners has access to nationwide best mentoring practices. These practices show that truancy declines with mentoring and that mentees trust their parents more than kids without mentors. The mentors are volunteers who go through a training program and are asked to commit to Windsor County Mentors for a period of a year after completing their training. Matthew serves as the chief development officer of Winter County Mentors.