Mentorship and the Rotary FAR Project
As Club members know, Margaret Shibley proposed the Rotary FAR Project at our meeting on September 24th and our partnership on this project with the Cataraqui-Kingston Club was approved. We are grateful for all of the terrific background work that Margaret has been doing with the Cataraqui-Kingston Rotary folks and this past week she went to the first mentorship meeting held by the KEYS Job Centre (
www.keys.ca) on Thursday afternoon to find out more about how the Mentorship training is going to be undertaken.
Please take a moment to read her notes below and we hope that many of our members will want to get involved in this important project.
Here is Margaret's report from the September 17th session held in Kingston.
Have you been thinking about being a mentor in this project? The Pathways to Education (P2E) high school and program graduates who are going on to full time employment, college, or university will be supported by the the FAR (Facilitator of Alumni Relations). Some alumni, tho, haven’t made up their minds yet. While we know there are lots of good reasons for delaying attendance at a post-secondary institution, the community they come from tends not to be so aware. These are the kids, estimated to be about 10 a year, who could really use some patient support. That’s where we come in.
This roll was discussed briefly at our September on-line meeting, and you have information already (see pp. 14-16 in the Annotated 24 Sep meeting agenda/presentation deck). KEYS (
keys.ca), which will be providing the mentorship training and program support, held an information session 17 Oct to respond to questions from potential Rotarian mentors. I attended to take notes for the Passport Club. Assuming you have read the information already provided by KEYS on the Insight Youth Mentoring Program, here are some points I took from the meeting that are more specific to us:
1. KEYS is a registered charitable organization. Our participation would fit in with a well established mentoring program, staffed by enthusiastic, educated, effective, and experienced folk. We would have back up throughout the mentoring process, not merely training. This is critical, as some of these kids will have issues that are well beyond our individual capacity to deal with alone.
2. The purpose is to develop healthy, respectful, and fun one-on-one mentoring relationships. Mentoring bonds help young people set and reach goals, building life skills and having fun.
3. The training (look at 7h, but more is available if desired) is offered by people who already know the clientele.
4, Research in this program has shown that mentees show the greatest benefit by about 1 year. So the program asks mentors for 4 hours a month (maybe 2 hours twice a month) for 5 months, but the mentees are ready to move on after a year. That doesn’t mean the relationship ends (that’s up to you and the mentee), just that if may become informal.
5, The match is important - so each mentor will meet 3 potential mentees, and each mentee will meet 3 potential mentors. The program staff will coordinate the best match.
6. Both training and mentoring can be done on line and will be supported by the program. However, face to face conversations sharing a coffee or an activity have value. (The program even has funds set aside for things like taking an art course together!) The Program Facilitator did say she would look to see whether some kids were in Ottawa or Cornwall.
7. Training is offered regularly. However, the group felt it better if all the Rotary mentors were trained in the same sessions so that we got to know each other as well. Ana Sutherland / John Gale, CK Rotary, will be coordinating training dates and times and let us know. Training could begin as early as 24 October.
8. Finally, nope! I am neither too old nor too privileged to be of use as a mentor to any of these kids. That was the very strong response when I asked. So that means, neither are you.
Members should refer to information already made available in the Annotated deck from our club's September 24th meeting. Later this week we will either re-send you the relevant ODF documents or provide you with a link where you can find the documents explaining how the mentorship program will work.
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Upcoming screening of Resilience: The Biology of Stress & The Science of Hope.
Thursday October 24 at the Bio Sciences Complex auditorium of Queen's University at 116 Barrie
Street.
Admission is free.
Registration from 5:30 to 5:50
Screening from 6:00 to 7:30