Established to provide girls (7-17 years old) with the opportunity to learn the vital life skill of effective communication, Polished Pebbles girls mentoring group is changing the lives of girls throughout the Chicagoland area.

Polished Pebbles is on a mission to teach girls how to combat the challenges of life through the substitution of aggressive forms of communication and problem solving with new strategies that allow them to gain a respectable reputation without aggression.

In partnership with local schools, businesses, and over 75 volunteer mentors, Polished Pebbles has helped girls learn how to exhibit poise, react responsibly as opposed to retaliating, demonstrate assertiveness versus aggressiveness, identify the difference between class and sass, and become polished individuals.

This February, Polished Pebbles Girls Mentoring Program will celebrate Men’s Month 2012. Men’s Month presents males with a unique opportunity to step foot into an all-female Polished Pebbles mentoring sessions and offer a male perspective on many of the issues facing young women today in society. Men’s Week 2011 experienced great success with over 30 men participating in various mentoring sessions held throughout the week.

Due to how successful the week was last year, the weeklong mentoring initiative has now been extended to a whole month.  Polished Pebbles is excited to invite fraternities, men’s organizations, church groups, and independent, successful and talented men to mentor for a day.

Male mentors will participate in sessions at one of the Polished Pebbles’ partnering schools and communities (University of Chicago Donoghue, Woodlawn, and Kenwood-Oakland Charter Schools & Dearborn Homes). The men will provide the young girls with advice on school, family, and friend issues, discuss how to create career goals and fulfill them, and share their own personal experiences & success stories.

In addition to inviting men to mentoring sessions during the month of February, Polished Pebbles will also be hosting its first Daddy-Daughter Dance to honor males that have positively impacted the Pebbles’ lives. The dance will take place on Saturday, Feb. 11 at University of Chicago Donoghue Charter School at 707 E. 37^th Street from 10:00 AM-12:00 PM. Anyone interested in attending should email the organization at info@polishedpebbles.com. Notable men who will be attending include Sixth Ward Alderman Rod Sawyer, CBS News’ traffic reporter Derrick Young, CEO/Editor Carl West of Truth Be Told News Service, and Steven Powell, a national mentoring advocate from Mentoring USA.

In many traditional African societies, transitions from one life stage to the next - from birth through death - were marked with specific and predetermined rites of passage.

Councils of Elders have their roots in indigenous African communities which viewed the Elders as repositories of knowledge and wisdom, and more importantly, as the guardians and purveyors of a community's values, traditions, norms and interests.