Windows to the World : Dozens of professional women are serving as role models, career guides and friends to schoolgirls under a mentor program aimed at eighth- and ninth-graders.

Appalled at the scarcity of brown and black female faces in the business world, dozens of professional women are serving as mentors to girls at Mount Vernon Junior High School and several other local schools to expose them to career possibilities.

The group, known as MOSTE, an acronym for Motivating Our Students Through Experience, pairs each participant with a successful businesswoman as role model, career guide and friend.

The program, which includes everything from career planning to table manners to office field trips, is a hit with both the girls and the mentors.

“You get a mentor who guides you so you can get a career,” said Blanca Franco, 14, who was chosen this month as the program’s top “mentee,” as the participants are called, and will receive a savings bond at a MOSTE awards banquet tonight. “She helps you keep yourself in school, to think of doing something in your life. And you see how they act, so that when you go to interviews you know how to dress and how to fill out job applications. They are there for you.”

Said her mentor, employment-agency owner Noelle King, “I can learn from her, from what she does and her self-discipline.”

The two have talked, lunched and walked in the park (Blanca’s family is reluctant to allow her to go on longer outings with a “stranger”), and King will be on hand for Blanca’s junior high graduation this month.

“It gives them the idea that you can do something even if you are a minority,” King said. “They don’t know what, and we are helping them ask questions and focus for later. . . . They are still real young, but this gives them a seed for the future--things they will think more about later.”

The program concentrates on eighth- and ninth-graders, said MOSTE founding member Glenda Madrid, who runs her own consulting firm, “because we want to get to them before they get pregnant, drop out of school, make choices they can’t redo.”

John Small, principal of the predominantly Latino Mount Vernon, praises the program for providing “a window on the real world. Most of our students do not travel farther than two or three miles from home, and experience the real world only through television. They have never been to the beach, inside industry or to the Music Hall.” Blanca, for example, who came here from El Salvador at age 7, lives nearby with her parents and two younger sisters. An A student, she said she first dreamed of becoming a pediatrician but discarded that notion when she found she couldn’t stand the sight of blood. Next headed for a magnet high school and, possibly, college, she talks of joining the Navy and becoming a pilot.

“My dad said, ‘That’s only for boys.’ But I go, ‘No, women are now working at that too.’ We learned in our workshops that a woman can work at any job, when before only men were allowed. A Delta pilot man who came said women can so become pilots now.”

MOSTE is the brainchild of Arco executive Lois Frankel, who in the mid-1980s assembled a dozen female company representatives to address the dearth of minority women at top corporate levels and in business and industry in general.

The idea is to grab girls’ interest while they are still young enough to be influenced, early enough that they can schedule a challenging course load and plan for college, before they make irrevocable choices or get too caught up in what some mentors delicately call “the boy thing.”

The mentor program was launched at Horace Mann Junior High six years ago. Mount Vernon was added two years later, followed by Audubon Junior High. Early supporters included Arco, Edison, IBM and the Black Women’s Network, but now at least a dozen companies participate.

The program has grown to include 82 girls annually from the three schools, and MOSTE president Madrid says the group is committed to adding a new school every two years, the next possibly being Washington Prep or a school in Koreatown.

But Madrid said more volunteers, especially bilingual professional women, are needed. Anyone, including non-minority women, who is interested and can commit at least one afternoon a month for one year can call Madrid at (310) 410-1605.

Girls who want to join the program do not have to be “the cream of the crop,” Madrid said, but must maintain at least a C average. They are asked to submit a written application, including a statement as to why they want to take part in the program, and their teachers must grant approval for them to participate during school hours.

Science teacher Bernadette Bennett, who has shepherded MOSTE at Mount Vernon, said the program tries to help the girls develop personal skills and self-confidence and to begin to think about their futures in terms of possible careers, even if it is little more than a glimpse into those futures.

The young women take career-assessment skills and aptitude tests, go through a college-preparatory workshop with college representatives and learn basic etiquette. They also visit companies such as Arco, First Interstate, IBM, Paramount Pictures and Digital Equipment, where they not only get to see women working in various roles but go through mock job interviews and hear panel discussions by women who have achieved success--despite similar obstacles--in worlds few of the students thought were within their grasp.

At one monthly luncheon meeting, for example, TRW software engineer Ann LaGrone talked about what she does, how she got there, what education was needed and even how much she gets paid. She stressed the importance of assessing one’s personality and staying open to future jobs that may not exist now. Asked if she had always known what she wanted to do, LaGrone said: “Yeah. I knew exactly. I wanted to be a ballerina!”

At another, seven girls--some of whom were too shy a year ago to stand up and talk before a group--confidently presented “personal profiles,” in which they described who they are in terms of such categories as values, personality and strengths, passions, skills and aptitudes, education and training goals, and possible career choices. They may not all become fashion designers or doctors or pilots or computer experts, but they are thinking ahead, which is exactly what their MOSTE mentors had hoped.

Said participant Teonia Waite, “Thanks for giving us hope to be successful women, for showing me the way and being there for me.”

The program is not without its problems, however. Some mentors say the participants’ families are sometimes unwilling to allow the girls to go to concerts or art exhibits with people they don’t know because they are suspicious of the women’s motives. One family, after two years, still thought their daughter’s mentor was a social worker in disguise coming to check up on them. Others have mistaken the mentor for a fairy godmother, going so far as to write out a list of items to be bought.

But many participants say the experience has been positive, even life-changing.

Twilla Brooks, for example, one of the first “graduates” of the program at Horace Mann, is now 18 and about to graduate from Dorsey High School. She is headed to UC Santa Barbara on a scholarship to major in law and society, with a minor in black studies. A self-possessed young woman, she said she considers her mentor, textbook sales representative Carol Tucker, “like a mother,” and both say they can’t imagine not staying in touch throughout their lives.

“Being in the program changed my perspective and my personality,” Twilla said. “I now know what to expect in the future and how to approach people.” She said she hopes the program will add more field trips and that it will be expanded to include the high school years instead of ending after the ninth grade.

Tucker said she has continued her relationship with Twilla, despite its formal end and her taking on two additional mentees, “because I could see that she had a lot of potential.”

Does the program really make a long-term difference in these girls’ lives? Because it is new (the first group graduated from high school last year), its impact on them as adults cannot be measured. But the nonprofit group recently surveyed nearly 200 mentors and began tracking former participants in hopes of getting an answer and improving the project.

The program is so popular that male students at Mount Vernon complained that they felt left out. As a result, a similar program, called GRATS--an acronym for Guiding, Redirecting Adolescents To Success--is in its third year there.

Math teacher and GRATS coordinator Vince Benson says that after the boys attended lunch meetings, industry tours and workshops on career and personal development, other teachers commented that they noticed an improvement.

“We are making them better students and providing many with a father image.”