Closure in Mentoring Relationships

Guest Post by Arundhuti Gupta

Inspired by her own mentors, 2011 Fellow Arundhuti Gupta founded Mentor Together to give Indian youth mentoring experiences that are democratic and empowering. Mentor Together works in the cities of Bangalore, Mysore and Pune with a community 1-1 mentoring model. This year, Mentor Together is on track to make 300 mentor/mentee matches.

"I never thought I’d have a mother after losing mine." This was what one of our Mysore mentees said about her relationship with her mentor in a pre-closure meeting. When our Mysore coordinator Smitha told me about this, it was one of those moments where you feel immensely happy and then sad the next moment. 

Anyone who is familiar with our work knows that building a relationship is really the end-game of Mentor Together. When we have a mentor with a deep connection with his/her mentee, positive outcomes are guaranteed. Positive relationships stir a natural yearning to be happy and do good. While Smitha's comment demonstrated this, I was sad because our mentee was reflecting on her year of mentoring as her mentor was moving from the formal relationship (and the intensity of meetings that go along with it) to a more informal one. I have always struggled with questions of closure - what next for this mentee? Will things regress for her? Have we made her dependant? 

I have a  more positive theory on closure: closure is actually one of the most important things in mentoring, because without it, a formal mentoring relationship will never get the chance to become a lifelong relationship.

What do I mean by that? There’s always a period of intensity in mentoring, where a close relationship and ‘tipping point’ experiences will bring about  positive development in a mentee. That intensity will go away, but in that ebb the mentee has space to reflect on who they are and make empowered choices. Those choices will actually bring a mentor and mentee closer, in a new kind of relationship that is more equal. 

When I was 20 and trying to figure out how I could do more for my city and community, I met Dr. Rajeev Gowda very randomly at a conference. He had a lot of ideas on youth empowerment that he wanted to get off the ground immediately, so I joined him with some others to make them a reality. Those were heady experiences. I was supposed to join Goldman Sachs in their graduate program, but took some time off to do career exploration events around Bangalore. It was a period where Dr. Gowda mentored me closely by pushing me to expand my leadership skills. 

Eventually I joined the working world as a bank employee. I felt suddenly cut off from my anchor, my mentor. I finished a year at work and went on to graduate school in the UK, which again further separated me from my original mentoring experience. In that year, I evaluated the things I had experienced after finishing college - volunteer work, work in a bank, and graduate studies in finance. The experience of leading something that helped young people was the most cherished of them. 

I started working on the blueprint of a youth mentoring NGO with friends in Manchester, and came back to start it in September 2009. I spoke to Dr. Gowda about my plans soon after I came back and he was surprised that I had decided against the corporate path so early into my career. I asked him to sign on with me as co-trustee because mentoring was something we had ideated on together when we first started the career fairs. He readily agreed. 

A research grant that Dr. Gowda raised in 2010 helped me do some very important early work in understanding the field of youth mentoring. The experience was different from when he first mentored me. I made decisions independently and he helped me as a peer because he saw value in them. Our relationship continues to grow to this day.

I’m going to Mysore in a couple of days and I know I’m going to see some mentees very worried about their formal mentoring coming to a close. I’m going to tell them that when I moved away from my first formal mentoring experience, I realized I had it in me to actually start Mentor Together. I can’t wait to see what they do!

This post originally appeared on Arundhuti's blog Mentortogether Logs.  

Have a question about mentoring? Ask Arundhuti and her team on Twitter @Mentortogether!

Learn more about Arundhuti's mentoring philosophy and the work of Mentor Together:

From Social Entrepreneur to Communicator in Chief

Guest Post by Frank Fredericks

 

Frank Fredericks is the founder of World Faith and Mean Communications. After graduating from NYU, Frank worked in the music industry, managing artists such as Lady Gaga.  In 2006, he founded World Faith, a youth-led interfaith organization active in 16 countries.  Frank has contributed to the Huffington Post, Washington Post, and has been interviewed on Good Morning America, NPR, and New York Magazine.  He is a Fellow alumnus of IFYC, Soliya, AMENDS, and YouthActionNet.

 

Being the founder of a startup or social business can be overwhelming.  While you founded the organization to counter violence, end hunger, or promote human rights, you’ll likely find yourself staring at balance sheets, quelling tensions between team members, and recruiting new volunteers and supporters, not to mention endlessly fundraising. Often times at the bottom on the list, if there at all, is building and implementing an effective communications strategy.

Yet communications impacts everything.  Whether it’s how your website reveals your organizational values, how you measure impact, or guiding the way that your donors speak about your work, communications impacts everything.  

Reaching this realization was not an overnight transformation for me.  When I founded World Faith, I thought I would magically be “granted” the funding necessary and hire a staff to manage all the organizational work, and I would be globetrotting starting interfaith projects fighting poverty and deincentivizing violence. This was not the case. I struggled between building an unstructured but quickly growing nonprofit while worrying endlessly about my own financial stability.  It was a stressful, humbling, and truly beneficial process. Even today, when World Faith is now active in 16 countries, I still spend at least half my time on organizational manners.  None is more important than communications, and I’ve learnt so much over these past years, that I’ve begun working as a communications consultant for other nonprofits. Through both World Faith and my consulting at Mean Communications, I’ve discovered some key lessons I’d like to share with you.

You are your organization’s Communicator in Chief.  Never forget that. You must be willing to become a walking, talking, representative for your mission.  Whether in the office or out with your friends, on camera or buying groceries, you never know when you might meet someone who can be your newest volunteer, donor, or beneficiary.  Always be ready.  The best way to do that is to:

Tell your story.  There is a reason you decided to launch your initiative.  You already know the components of your story; where you came from, the journey to where you are, and the ‘aha’ moment along the way; but perhaps you haven’t rehearsed it enough to support your organization.  If you get good at it, you should constantly be doing two things.  First, you should make it obvious that you are the person born to be leading your initiative.  People support people as much as ideas.  Secondly, your organization isn’t about you, you are about your organization.  Your story should illuminate the greater story of the organization.  If you do this well, you’ll actually be inviting your audience to connect to your organization’s story through your story, in an empathetic impulse.  This is because:

Nothing is more important than a relationship.  You can show people the studies, quote statistics, have your elevator speech ready, and even craft your story, but if you aren’t willing to emotionally invest in others, and more importantly, be humble enough to accept the emotional investment of others, then you are likely to not achieve what you need to.  At the end of the day, the relations you have, whether with funders, donors, partners, the media, or your beneficiaries, are what you are truly cultivating.  Speaking from experience at World Faith, we’ve never received a donation from someone who hasn’t  either met me first, or knew an existing donor or supporter.  

These are three things you can do now, without even turning to a communications plan.  It’s free, fast, and forever rewarding to your organization.  Sure, you have plenty excuses why you don’t have time to do it, but the question is, what’s holding you back?  Are you representing your work at every opportunity?  Telling your story and building relationships?  If not, you might not be able to afford not investing some energy into building yourself up as the communicator your organization needs.  They say we are called human beings.  So we must be before we do.  We must be better communicators before we can ever do communications, and that starts with you.

Bringing YouthActionNet to Africa

By Jessica Elisberg

I recently returned from my first visit to Kampala, in the “Pearl of Africa,” where I was fortunate enough to spend an evening with five Ugandan YouthActionNet alumni who between them represent the last four fellowship classes. It didn’t take long to see what makes each of these young innovators so exceptional, and it took even less time to feel motivated by their energy and passion for the change they are affecting in their communities.

Our conversations touched on many topics, ranging from Ugandan politics to recent developments and successes the Fellows have achieved, but we landed on YouthActionNet’s expansion to Africa. At the moment, in addition to Laureate Global Fellows, there are 11 other fellowship programs that are members of YouthActionNet at the national or regional level; none of them is based in Africa.

Fellowship alumni gather in Kampala

We’re working on changing that by developing two regional fellowship programs for young social entrepreneurs in Africa: one for French-speaking youth, and one for English-speaking youth. It’s an initiative that we, the YouthActionNet team, are incredibly excited about, and it was inspiring to see that our enthusiasm was shared by the amazing young Ugandans I met.

We discussed the role that African youth can play in society today. “Africans have the resources and skills to improve our own communities,” said Kenneth Odur, 2010 Fellow. “But what’s missing is the engagement and empowerment of young people,” added Muhammed Kisirisa, 2012 Fellow. Gertrude Namuwonge, Class of 2009, agreed. “African youth have been left out of decision-making, and we need to participate and make change.” 

We also talked about the opportunities these fellowship programs would bring to the continent. Benjamin Sunday, Class of 2011, said that he hopes YouthActionNet can “be a tool to make a positive change in Africa.” Jane Nampijja, Class of 2012, added that “these programs can help develop talents that no one is discovering, and motivate youth to be more innovative and creative” in their problem-solving.

What’s even more exciting is how close at hand these new programs are. The Francophone program, Innove4Africa, has already launched and is currently accepting applications for its first class of fellows. To learn more about the program and apply, you can visit the website of host partner Synapse Center. But if you’re living in Africa and don’t speak French, never fear – the Anglophone institute will launch later this year!

A Giant Awakens: A New Start for Brazil

By Lina Maria Useche Jaramillo 

The world has heard many things about Brazil in the past month. Apparently something interesting was going on here and it wasn't the Confederations Cup 2013 or preparations for the World Cup 2014. Something different was appearing on the covers of newspapers and magazines all over the globe that could be summed up in the simple sentence: “It's not just about the 20 cents!” Rising bus fares had ignited a long-simmering protest movement against much more.  

I do not believe in coincidence, but I must say a magical coincidence occurred in March when I attended a meeting of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers in Curitiba. One of our local hub members, Pedro, the 22-year-old co-founder of Instituto Atuação (Action Institute), an organization that fights political apathy among Brazilian youth, shared with us the essential flaws of our democracy compared to other countries. While Brazil has a solid democratic system, we’re near the bottom of the list when it comes to popular participation. So Pedro encouraged us to take action, introducing us to the Eleições Limpas (Clean Elections) draft law designed to transform the electoral system. The law was bold, even revolutionary. We couldn´t be more excited to be part of it and to start working for the campaign to collect signatures.

For the next two months, we waited anxiously to be given the green light to start, but something far bigger was happening, something we couldn't have predicted. The giant of popular protest was waking up and moving from the online world onto the streets.

The news on the morning of June 18 was completely different from other days. The images of crowds taking to the streets, parks, and public buildings to demand their rights – and the rights of an entire population – were unbelievable. Over the next three weeks, millions of people raised their voices. Said one tearful 60-year-old woman on a news broadcast: "I never thought I'd live to see this moment. I am thrilled to see that the youth arose and that this generation is willing to fight for a better country." 

Everyday citizens, long frustrated with their inability to combat corruption and influence Brazil’s future, needed the motivation to get out of their houses and take charge. That motivation came in the form of an increase in bus fare. A well-organized movement called Passe Livre (Free pass) in São Paulo, had for many years investigated the price of public transportation, claiming there was no transparency regarding the contracts of private companies that run the public transit system, and no reason for increasing fees. So the movement started to mobilize people, through Facebook, on June 6, 7, and 11, to take the streets and say “NO” to this increase. Their motto: “If the cost does not fall, we will not stop!” 

That initiative, driven by no more than 1,000 people, inspired the nation. Within days, more than 300,000 people were taking the streets all over Brazil not only to protest increases in public transportation costs but to also show the government that we have more to say – and more to fight for. People affirmed that they wanted better public education, better hospitals, and more transparency related to the cost of the Confederations and World Cup infrastructure investments. People demanded better laws, fought against the proposed “Gay cure” law, and asked for more security and less violence and robbery. Bowing to this pressure, the government announced that the transportation fees would not increase, and in some cities, they would go down, and we celebrated. That said, we still had a long list of wishes, so we didn't stop.

On June 20, the protest to fight against corruption engaged 1.5 million people in 120 Brazilian cities. I happened to be present at what would become the most violent protest in Curitiba. My husband and I joined the peaceful march to the government palace. Everything was going great and it was a beautiful scene to watch. I cried when thousands of protesters started singing the national anthem. But by the time we got to the government palace, the uproar started. The riot police were ready in big numbers and didn't let protesters get any closer to the palace. This provided a perfect excuse for a small group of vandals and troublemakers to strike, throwing sticks and stones at the police and setting fire to everything in their way. In response, the police threw stun grenades, sprayed tear gas, and fired rubber bullets toward the crowd. The last thing I saw before we left were groups destroying public buildings, breaking windows, and smashing cars in what looked like a war zone. Yes, it was sad, but that didn't frighten the people who took to the streets again and again. 

Eventually, our collective cry was heard by our President, Dilma Rousseff, who affirmed that the Government and Congress would respond. During the week of June 24-28, Congress worked harder than ever, passing a series of reforms related to corruption and rejecting the Constitutional Amendment Project, which reduces the Public Ministry’s power to investigate wrongdoing.  Also a ballot was put in place to revoke the mandate of lawmakers accused of irregularities and corruption.

As Brazilians, we celebrated, but kept our eyes wide open. More than 60 percent of protesters were between the ages of 21 to 35 – an entire generation that used to passively watch the corruption corroding our society – but not anymore. Our next goal is political reform. We need “clean elections,” as an alternative to the current system which perpetuates corruption and allows corrupt politicians to get elected only to defend the interest of a few. 

The inertia has been broken. We are no longer merely Facebook activists. We have a dream for the future of our country, and will keep fighting until it becomes a reality. 

Lina is Executive Director of Aliança Empreendedora in Brazil which supports organizations, NGOs, and governments in designing, testing, and implementing inclusive business models and projects that stimulate and support entrepreneurship for low-income communities. In 2010, IYF awarded Lina a YouthActionNet Fellowship for her role in founding Impulso Microcredit, a pioneering microcredit organization that launched the first crowd-funding platform to invest in low-income micro-entrepreneurs. She is Colombian living in Brazil.