Bloomingdales Window Unveiled for National Mentoring Month 2009

15:47PM on April 30 2009

Bloomingdale’s Window Unveiling

It’s January 9^th, 2009.  The Bloomingdale’s window at 59^th and Lexington is completely covered with a huge white curtain.  Matilda Raffa Cuomo (Former First Lady of New York State), Michael Gould (Bloomingdale’s CEO), Tamara Tunie (Law and Order: SVU star), and Mr. G (CW11 weatherman) are waiting outside.  Soon seventy 3^rd graders from P.S. 59 will join them, along with their Bloomingdale’s mentors.  3-2-1. PULL!!!!   Down comes the curtain revealing portraits of Bloomingdale’s mentors as seen through the eyes of their P.S. 59 mentees.  “Where is my picture?” says a mentee. “There I am!” “It looks just like me!” and “You’re such an artist,” are just a few other phrases yelled out with excitement that morning.  After finding and admiring their pictures and art work, mentors and mentees were headed for another treat where they enjoyed breakfast inside of Bloomingdale’s at Forty Carrots.  The Second Annual Charles Grodin Champion of Change Award was presented to Faith Gertner.  Faith has been mentoring for ten years now and is now working with her third mentee.  She’s always giving a helping hand at mentoring sessions, taking pictures and even scooping ice cream. Last year, the first award was presented to Celeste Eschenwald.  For the past ten year, Celeste has been the glue holding the mentoring program at Bloomingdale’s together.  In 1998, when our partnership started, Celeste was a one of our first mentors.  Today, she is the coordinator of the program and oversees 70 mentors and mentees matches and coordinates two days of mentoring.