10. Student Profiler/Performer, E-mentoring and future plans

This week the mentors and their mentees had an opportunity to catch up with one another briefly. However, the major focus was on the students completing the Student Profiler, actually called the Student Performer. This the majority of students managed to do in the allotted time. It is going to be a fantastic tool for future mentoring relationships from what I have seen thus far. The Performe affirms the students in some key areas of their personal development, though it also clearly shows areas in which the mentors can work with their mentees during the months ahead, which is fantastic.

The key areas the Performer covers are:

• Learning Abilities
• Socialisation: Mixing with other people
• Communication
• Physical Image
• Career Planning
• Global Self-Worth

Indeed, the Performer exceeds my expectations :-) and I think it was a very useful exercise for the mentors to be alongside their mentees as the latter completed it - there was certainly some healthy discussion going on.

I have undertaken to provide each mentor with an analysis of their mentee's Performer before they next meet in mid- November -(two week break for exams :-(

One of our mentees, who had been sick for quite some time, was present this time around and met for the first time. Both were so keen to get started, which is great. The mentor will try and link up for another meeting while the school exams are on. The School Coordinator will arrange this.

After our mentoring session debrief I met with the school's IT coordinator to go through the plans to set up the ementoring component of the program. The school has done a fantastic job in this area, linking the ementoring component to the school website. Students and mentors will be given Usernames and Passwords to log in and communicate with each other. The Principal, School Coordinator and Program Coordinator (that's me :-) ) will be able to monitor the communication. There is also a special feature which allows students to send a 'panic' message if they ever feel uncomfortable with the content of an email. At our next session I have asked for the IT Coordinator to share how the ementoring component will work - we are making positive progress!!

The early successes of this program have led our organisation to make the decision to extend the pilot to two more schools in the regions we serve in 2008. This means we will trial the program in each of the three regions we serve. I am meeting with the potential two schools during the next week or so. The overall idea is to have the pilot programs wrapped up by the end of 2008, so, if we are unable to secure further funding, we will at least have created a replicable program which can be used by others.

Not short of work at the moment!!

9. School is Back!! First outing for new mentees

Schools returned for the final term (semester) of the year yesterday. I have been working with another oganisation to set up and run a Try a Trade Day. Basically, what this means is that one of our local schools allows us to use their hall. A very large truck arrives, we work hard to unpack it and, in the space of a couple of hours, we have about 14 different stalls set up for the kids to get a taste of different trades eg, hairdressing, beauty, florist, automotive, bricklaying, cooking, painting and plastering, plumbing, horticulture, welding and so on. Most of the stalls are run by volunteer apprentices. Groups of 30 students at a time come through the hall. They are given one hour to get to as many stalls as interest them. From the feedback we received from about 176 students (aged between 14 and 17) that went through today, it was a great success.

Included in the one school group were 10 mentees. I thought it would be a good opportunity for them to have a taste of some different career possibilities and, when they meet up with their mentors, they will have something to talk about and to share, remembering that this GR8 MATES mentoring program is aimed at encouraging the students to transition from school to the workplace, weighing up as many options as they can. Hopefully, the mentors will encourage them and assist them on this journey in the months ahead. They all seemed to enjoy their time going around the stalls, so it will be interesting to hear what comes out of the experience. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the day and the safety and security conditions around running the day, we could not invite the mentors to go around the stalls with their mentees as either observers or participants.

Next week when we meet together the mentees will be completing the Student on-line profiler and I look forward to seeing the results of those. More on that later .....