WHILE IN CAMBODIA as part of Wheaton’s Human Needs and Global Resources (HNGR) program last spring, I worked at Alongsiders International, an organization that provides churches with a faith-based mentoring curriculum based on 27 comic books. Alongsiders staff members train mentors on how to read the comics so they can teach their mentees— called Little Brothers/Sisters— lessons rooted in Christian values. 

My research focused on whether the mentors were absorbing and teaching the messages in the comics effectively. In my process of discovery, I found that the mentors didn’t remember many of the comics and that their beliefs didn’t always reflect the main theme of the comic books. As a result of my findings, I worked with the director of Alongsiders International to help enhance a discipleship training manual. Now the program aims to more deeply engage mentors with the comic book messages so they can internalize them and pass the messages along adequately.

I was able to use my research, which I originally perceived as a failure, to strengthen the structure of the program so that the messages portrayed in the comic books would transform the mentors’ perspectives on life and, in turn, their mentees’ understanding of the world.