This Black History Month, and on the lead up to National Mentoring Day, we have been on the search for 100 mentors to commit to guiding a young person from a diverse or disadvantaged background through the early stages of their career.
We are thrilled to have met this target by National Mentoring Day, with the support of our corporate partners, who have pledged industry professionals that will be matched with mentees via the mentoring platform Guider.
What did we learn with our mentors?
We kicked off with a training session on National Mentoring Day, where members of our team and our partners at Guider, a platform hoping to facilitate career growth through mentorship, shared information on how the platform can be used effectively. We also explored how a mentors’ expertise can best be utilised to develop a young person’s career.
The training session presented our overarching vision, ensuring all mentors were aligned with the aims and objectives of our mentoring programme- to work with mentees to improve on areas such as communication, technical skills and professional and personal development enabling them to thrive and achieve their goals. Attendants also gained important information on best practices, how to provide effective and long-term support, myth-busting, and next steps. Mentors were then shown how to navigate and operate the platform, and how to access helpful resources.
This is not the first time Blueprint has championed the power of a high impact mentoring campaign. The training session also included a rewarding insight from one of our previous mentors Dzidzor Kwaku, who attested to his own tenure supporting a young adult on one of our programmes, along their journey:
Mentoring has tought me that we all need somebody to help us see the endless possibilities that lie within. We are all mentors and mentee’s, I did not make it on my own! And nobody has
Why is mentoring so important?
A career mentor might not first spring to mind when we talk about the importance of representation in the workplace. Yet, the positive role that these industry leaders can set toward young people of diverse ethnic heritage or from low socio-economic backgrounds are crucial. Such figures can help influence their mentees’ actions, motivating them to discover their true potential and succeed in future endeavours.
Mentoring is not just about one person coaching another. It is about empowering the mentee to be better equipped to enter their higher education or early career stage, having the knowledge and the confidence to succeed. As an opportunity to improve on areas such as communication, technical skills, professional and personal development, our participants will also be in more control over their career direction and aspirations.
100 Mentors
Our drive to find 100 mentors has been part of our Black History Month campaign this year, with our team working tirelessly over the past month to secure these places for both mentors and mentees.
100 Mentors connects organisations that recognise and realise the benefits of a diverse workforce, and the potential of young people who, when given the correct encouragement, can and will exceed expectations. We know that hand can open up a plethora of opportunities, so we’d like to thank our corporate partners that have pledged mentors and made this promising initiative a reality.