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TOPICS
1. Opportunity for Creating and Strengthening Mentoring Programs
2. Online Conference on E-Mentoring
3. Exchange Links for Greater Visibility and Community
4. List Your Mentorship Training Events and Conferences
5. Two Key Studies from Mentoring Research
OPPORTUNITY FOR CREATING AND STRENGTHENING MENTORING PROGRAMS
Peer Resources will be conducting a two-day seminar on building successful and effective corporate and business mentoring programs in Victoria, British Columbia, July 21-22, 2003. Participants in the seminar will be able to understand the differences and similarities between mentoring and coaching, counselling, managing, and supervising; recognize the characteristics of effective mentors; specify the components of a successful mentor program; identify and reduce barriers while increasing supports for mentoring; identify an effective mentoring approach for the back-home setting that reflects their cultural context, including specific strategies for recruiting, selecting, matching, training and coordinating; and locate the resources to support a back-home mentoring plan.
The seminar is based on principles of adult learning and uses experiential skill-building exercises and activities; builds on participant experience and ideas; provides focused input from the workshop leader; encourages sharing learning experience; provides a library of relevant resources; and provides a notebook and take-away trainer materials for each participant. Participants who complete the workshop will receive a Certificate of Completion and be eligible for Continuing Education Unit (CEU) credit. The fee for the workshop is $543.50(Cdn) or $420.50(US). Additional information and online registration is available at http://www.mentors.ca/trng.html. Or call 1.800.567.3700.
ONLINE CONFERENCE ON E-MENTORING
MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership will be providing a forum on E-Mentoring with the most current information and best practices. The forum, E-Mentoring: Creating New Ways to Connect will be held June 16-20, 2003 in MENTOR's Online Community. The forum will focus on how to start an e-mentoring program, discuss e-mentoring formats, provide information on a new resource toolkit and share strategies for building partnerships to implement e-mentoring.
Some of the experts who will be sharing information and best practices on e-mentoring during this week long event include: Jayne Cravens, Online Volunteer Specialist, United Nations Volunteers Program; David Neils, Founder and Director, International Telementor Program; Lisa Derx, e-buddies Director, Best Buddies International; Thomas Kriese, Director, AOL Time Warner Foundation and Jessica Rogers, Manager, Achieve! Minneapolis. For more information, contact Kristi Zappie-Ferradino, MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership, email: KZFerradino@mentoring.org
EXCHANGE LINKS FOR GREATER VISIBILITY AND COMMUNITY
We currently provide a description of your services on our website. Our primary intention is to help visitors find quality services to meet their mentoring interests and goals. We are advocates for mentoring and we believe that promoting your services strengthens the support for effective mentoring relationships.
Would you be willing to provide a link to Peer Resources on your website? Mutual or reciprocal linking between like-minded organizations has become a common practice on the Internet. While it can increase your visibility and placement with search engines, our goal is to help Internet users find the best services that meet their needs.
If you are willing to provide a link to Peer Resources on your site, please contact Rey Carr at rcarr@mentors.ca.
LIST YOUR MENTORSHIP TRAINING EVENTS AND CONFERENCES
While mentoring occurs naturally in most organizations, specific challenges such as leadership succession, employee turnover, and ethical practice cannot be left to chance. Deliberate, systematic mentoring programs have shown considerable success in dealing with the contemporary issues faced by businesses, community organizations and educational institutions.
We invite you to list any national or international training events, seminars or conferences associated with mentoring that your organization provides. There is no cost or fee for the listing.
For examples of current mentorship seminars and workshops conducted by a variety of organizations, go to www.mentors.ca/mentorwks.html.
WHAT'S NEW FROM MENTORING LITERATURE
Peer Resources continually scans the professional and popular published literature to find articles of interest to people involved in mentoring. Two of several hundred recent additions to the searchable, annotated bibliography at <http://www.mentors.ca/SearchB.html> are:
Jucovy, L. (2001). Building relationships: A guide for new mentors. Philadelphia, PA: Public/Private Ventures.
This paper answers the question of why some adult-youth mentoring relationships do well while others lose momentum. The key to success is the expectation of the mentor and the focus of the mentor on building the relationship (instead of reforming the youth, etc.). Based on research the author details why it isn't always easy to build friendly relationships and even mentors with good instincts can stumble or be blocked by difficulties. This guide describes ten important features of successful mentor attitudes and styles and describes how each one can be put into practice: 1. Be a friend; 2. Have realistic goals and expectations; 3. Have fun together; 4. Give your partner voice and choice in deciding on activities; 5. Be positive; 6. Let your partner have much of the control over what the two of you talk about-and how you talk about it; 7. Listen; 8. Respect the trust your partner places in you; 9. Remember that your relationship is with the youth, not the youth's parent; and 10. Remember that you are responsible for building the relationship. (RAC)
Hollingsworth, M.A., and Fassinger, R.E. (2002). The role of faculty mentors in the research training of counseling psychology doctoral students. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 49, 324-330.
