Moving to a new city can mean connecting to friends, hobbies and culture, which can be difficult, and if those links aren't found, a new resident may soon be looking at another move away. Visit Bentonville is trying to make relocating to the city and the region easier with a program called Belong Bentonville, matching new residents with a mentor. The program developed through an 18-month Harvard Kennedy School project designed to help cities tackle a challenge.
Kalene Griffith, president and CEO of Visit Bentonville: I started thinking about it, and then I also started hearing from people saying, hey, this friend of ours that's a trailing spouse is not engaged, can't get engaged to our community. And those folks that I was meeting with are like, hey, can you connect me with this person or, hey, I work from home, I'm a civil engineer, I'm a woman, I'd like to meet with other civil engineer women. And I'm like, oh gosh. So it became kind of, all of a sudden you have an hour meeting with them. And then all of a sudden you go and go, oh, you have another hour. Sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes an hour, sometimes an hour and a half that you're getting to try to connect them with people. And I started thinking, this is a challenge for our community to get engaged with people when they're moving into the area.
Kyle Kellams: So how will the mentors and mentees, how can they facilitate these connections?
Griffith: Yeah, so I did a ton of research because I started trying to think there's got to be some kind of software, and I didn't really want to build a software. But it was one of those things that in my mind I was like, I could build this, but that's a whole nother dollar figure and different things like that. So what I started doing was calling on corporate mentor programs and asking them if they would transition into a community mentor program. And because in those corporate type of things, what they do is that you answer questions, you answer questions, and then they connect you.
I call it kind of like that personality testing where, hey, this would be a good connection for you. So I talked to, I think, six different organizations or businesses that did that. One of them, Rivet, said, hey, we're interested in this, let's see how we can make this work. And so they have launched it. There's a few — you know, it's always a work in progress. This is the first time they're doing it. First time for us. I think we have some work to do. But I do think it has the potential to grow. And I think it's going to blossom, because I think there are some things we can tweak.
But initially a mentor will go in and fill it out, a mentee will go in and fill it out, and then they'll connect them. And then it guides them to say, hey, we want you to meet with these folks one or two times. We're not making them year long. I think what will come from it, Kyle, is that either they'll figure out that they need to go find another tribe, or they need to connect them with somebody that they're interested in, or you're going to also find people that become friends from that connectivity.
So I think that system takes about 15 minutes to fill out, Kyle. And then from there, you'll get emails back and forth when we find that connector, and then they'll have that opportunity. We kind of guide them to connect after that. And then it's up to them. If they're interested in art, maybe take them to Crystal Bridges. Maybe it's just have coffee. It's their opportunity. We don't want to say that it's speed dating. It's more about connecting with people in our community. It does have that feel initially, but I do feel like it is that opportunity. What you're looking for is somebody to connect with that you can relate to, that can help you get a bigger, broader connection.
Kellams: What I think's interesting also is usually when we think of a mentorship program, we think of perhaps an age difference between the mentor and the mentee. You're thinking of someone who's maybe just come on into your company or just come on into your school. This opens up all sorts of possibilities.
Griffith: I think your mentor could be somebody that's the same age as you, which may become — I think that's one of the things that I loved about this is that you may become great friends, lifelong friends, because of your connectivity of your like-minded thought process or your interest. So I think this opens up a door of multiple facets that we're not even, you know, I think we're going to learn from.
Kellams: Where can people, either as a mentee or a mentor, sign up?
Griffith: You can go to VisitBentonville.com under Community. Belong Bentonville is a dropdown. And you can go right in there and sign up if you're wanting to be a mentor or a mentee.
Kalene Griffith is president and CEO of Visit Bentonville. We spoke last week via Zoom.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
