CHILLICOTHE, Ohio — A Ross County mentoring program that pairs high school teenagers with trained adult mentors is entering its 10th year, and its director says the work still comes down to one thing: showing up for young people in Appalachian Ohio. Asti Powell, executive director of the Paper City Mentoring Project, leads the Chillicothe-based nonprofit, according to a feature published Nov. 6 by Ohio University, where Powell earned her master’s degree in 2014.
The Paper City Mentoring Project connects high school students in Ross County with what Ohio University describes as “committed, trained adult mentors” in one-to-one relationships. The mentoring is built around helping teenagers set and reach personal goals tied to relationships, health, and college and career readiness, the university said. “We meet teens where they are and focus on going deep rather than wide, helping each young person build the confidence, skills and support system they need to thrive,” Powell told Ohio University.
Powell’s path to the director’s office ran through the region she now serves. She graduated from Ohio University’s Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service Master’s in Public Administration Program in 2014, and told Ohio University that her student projects — including work on how fracking and oil and gas development affected housing in eastern Ohio — taught her to develop solutions alongside communities rather than for them. “They taught me the importance of working alongside communities to develop practical, collaborative solutions,” Powell told Ohio University.
After graduation, Powell was offered a full-time position with Hocking Athens Perry Community Action, and she later worked with the Ross County Health District and the City of Chillicothe, Ohio University said. Her projects in those roles included piloting a local produce resale program, helping establish a countywide Creating Healthy Communities coalition, developing a new playground and park, and helping bring on-demand transit and a trolley system to Chillicothe, she told the university.
Powell told Ohio University she still draws on lessons from Voinovich School professors, including Dr. Holly Raffle and former MPA director Judy Millesen, and applies skills from the program — organizational management, strategic planning, program development, evaluation and budgeting — in running the mentoring project today.
For families in Chillicothe and across Ross County, the program offers something concrete: a steady adult in a teenager’s corner during the years when college, career and life decisions come fast. A decade in, the project’s model remains deliberately personal — fewer students, deeper relationships — rather than a large, thinly spread roster.
Powell told Ohio University her hope is that every teenager the program serves leaves believing more strongly in themselves. “I find fulfillment in knowing that this work can help a young person feel seen, supported and empowered to keep moving forward,” she told Ohio University. As the Paper City Mentoring Project begins its 10th year, its next chapter will be written the same way as its first — one mentor, one teenager and one goal at a time in Ross County.