Overview
The Girls Mentorship Program, offered by the Council for Ontario’s Women’s Portfolio, is the only one of its kind in Canada designed to effectively address the needs of female youth by providing a forum for holistic interventions in terms of life and success skills. Mentees are paired with mentors, young Ismaili professional women, who are committed to supporting female youth in their critical years of development and exploring life options. Each relationship caters to the unique needs of the mentee and is supported by a highly trained management team. The program includes parents as part of the process which ensures that the mentees have the support they need at home. A pilot Girls Mentorship Program was launched as a Golden Jubilee initiative in 2007 and since then it has continued to evolve.
Current Programs
Currently, there are three programs running simultaneously covering several geographic areas in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta.
In Ontario, the 8th Mentorship Program cycle recently concluded and the graduation ceremony was held on March 1, 2014. This has been the largest program launched and included 42 mentor-mentee pairs from Etobicoke, Brampton, Mississauga, Kitchener and Hamilton.
Management Team
The program management team comprises of project leads for each sector, and team leads who support groups of five mentors each. Mentors and project team members are young Ismaili professional women who typically contribute 1 - 3 years of volunteer service in their role as mentors, team leads and project leads with the program. One of the key attributes of the management team is its ability to gather feedback and implement changes to ensure the continuous evolution and sustaining quality of the mentorship programs.
Workshops
The Girls Mentorship Program includes a series of workshops for mentors, mentees and their parents. Mentee workshops are based on life skills development to provide the necessary support to help mentees set goals and make progress towards achieving educational goals and career aspirations. Mentor workshops provide support to the mentors in their role in addition to contributing towards their personal and professional development. Workshops for parents are targeted at enhancing understanding and communication with their adolescent children.
Successes
Two success stories from the present cycle include:
A mentee immigrated to Canada less than three years ago. She had never been to school in her home country and could barely speak English. She did not think she could succeed in an English environment to achieve anything significant and felt her prospects were limited to working in a factory. Her relationship with her mentor inspired her to set a goal to get her driver’s license so as not to depend on her family members for transportation. Her mentor supported her to understand the rules of driving and helped her use the Internet to learn the vocabulary for her driving test. The mentee successfully passed her G1 and G2 driving tests in her first attempts. Her English has improved considerably, boosting her confidence to break through the barriers she faces.
One mentor had two sisters as her mentees, whom she guided in their career prospects by connecting them with lawyers to learn more about their field. She also encouraged the mentees to maintain high marks for pursuing post-secondary education, to look for jobs that provide better skill sets than working at fast food restaurants, for example, and to pursue their personal interests. One of the mentees had talent in photography and her mentor connected her with a professional photographer. She accompanied the professional photographer to a wedding shoot and some of the photos she took were used. She has now applied to Black’s to pursue her hobby.
In short, the Girls Mentorship Program has been able to achieve its objectives due to the remarkable dedication of the volunteer mentors, who have consistently adhered to the program requirement of meeting their mentees, in person, for a minimum of one hour every week. This personal interaction has helped to strengthen the bond between each mentee and her mentor, which has allowed the mentees to explore their lives in new ways and to grow on a personal level. In most cases this relationship continues after the program ends, and in some cases has gone on for more than five years. Strict vigilance and support from the management team has upheld and sustained the quality of the program over time and space.