What would you sacrifice to help someone improve his or her life or greatly improve their chances of achieving success?

Believe it or not, you can make a significant difference in less than seven hours.

That is essentially the commitment to be a part of George Rogers Clark High School’s Operation Preparation, an initiative where community members can take an active role in helping Clark County’s students plan their paths toward the future.

The program connects students with community advisors who use their expertise and life experiences to help prepare them for adulthood and what happens after graduation. Advisors talk with 10th grade students for about 20 minutes at a time focusing on their aspirations, the necessary steps to take toward various careers, how to achieve academic success and about life after graduation.

The impact this can have on youth is indisputable, but GRC needs volunteers to make this a reality.

The school is seeking individuals with experience in business, government, colleges or universities, community service organizations, PTAs and workforce investment career centers.

Advisors must complete a 30-minute online training session and be available either  March 28 or 29 from 8:45 a.m. to 3:20 p.m.

Those interested in participating as advisors should contact guidance counselor Elton Parish at 744-6111 or elton.parish@clark.kyschools.us. The deadline to sign up is March 24.

It has been said over and over that our youth are our future — here in Clark County, in Kentucky, in our great nation and across the world. Although those words may have become cliché, that doesn’t make them any less true. 

Programs like this and other mentoring initiatives are critical to our youth because they provide young adults with the foundation needed to succeed and instills in them the knowledge that anything is possible, regardless of the socio-economic challenges, adversity or personal situations. 

In many cases, that hope and self-belief becomes the most important lessons out youth could ever learn.