Una Darrell, a rising Middlebury College junior living with her family on Chappaquiddick, is using her time away from school to help children stay engaged safely during the coronavirus pandemic.

Ms. Darrell and a group of college friends recently founded a program called HomeBuddies that connects children in lower grades with older mentors online. After getting acquainted with a child and their family in an introductory session, the collegiate mentors design subsequent sessions, according to the website homebuddiesmentoring.com.

Crafting, creating stories and in-house scavenger hunts are among the possibilities mentioned on the website, which continues:

"Most of our content is original and based on our past experience with mentoring, teaching, and tutoring. While some activities stem from previous experience in schools or with virtual tutoring services, others are adapted from online parenting blogs, educational websites, and even child development textbooks. At the same time, many lessons and crafts are thought up by mentors themselves based on their interests, talents, and knowledge."

Sessions range from 30 to 60 minutes once or twice a week, and each week also includes six online group activities of 30 to 45 minutes.

While a $20 donation per mentoring session is suggested, HomeBuddies has a "pay what you can" model requiring no monetary exchange to take part.