Hopeworks knows it is essential for a youth to develop and maintain positive, professional relationships with supportive, caring persons. In many ways, our trainees have a network of those kinds of relationships here at Hopeworks. Our trainees help one another learn and grow, understand themselves in new, positive ways, and solve problems collectively. They form a community of care within our culture of hope. E-Mentoring is a way of expanding that community of care and promoting our culture of hope. Simply, e-mentoring allows others who cannot be here physically to participate in our community, share their experiences and engage our trainees around strategies for being successful in college, the workplace and life.
Mentors are:
- Business clients
- Supporters
- Donors
- Concerned community members
- Professional colleagues
- Partners
- Youth workers
- Educators
- Former staff members
Mentors have many motivations. Some see it as a way of giving back. Some like to reach out to youth and help them understand more about themselves. Others like to motivate youth and encourage them to pursue their education. Many are interested in connecting youth with their particular professional field (e.g. GIS or web design). Several of our mentors are interested in supporting the progress of young women and minorities. A few see it as a way of making the Internet more human and interactive. Still more find it as a way of giving back because an adult supported them when they were young. Whatever their motivation, mentors play a very important role to play at Hopeworks.
Although mentors come from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences, each shares the desire to help our trainees with their D.R.E.A.M.S. (Dynamic, Realizable Efforts to Attain and Maintain Success). Mentors do this by joining our secure, online, internal social network, Chatter. Chatter is a powerful social media tool provided to us, free of charge, by Salesforce.com. Everyone at Hopeworks uses Chatter and Salesforce.com. There are many exciting conversations and groups in which mentors can participate. Chatter is a running stream of daily life here at Hopeworks. Mentors see up-to-date information about trainees and interact with them in a real time environment. Chatter is very similar to Facebook and Twitter, but is exclusively for our Hopeworks community. Those who are comfortable with other online social mediums should have little problem adapting to Chatter. It is accessible from a mobile device, like an iPad, Blackberry or Android phone or tablet. It also interfaces nicely with email, allowing users to respond directly from email without having to login to Chatter. At this time, applicants must be familiar with social media and must demonstrate comfortability with mediums like Facebook and Twitter in order to effectively engage in e-mentoring.
At times the conversations are as simple as asking how a youth is progressing; at others, as engaged as discussing parts of a trainee’s personal development plan. Mentoring demands no knowledge or experience: only a willingness to share knowledge gained from life experiences and to encourage and support the limitless potential we know is in each youth. A mentoring relationship generally requires a daily review of activity and the composition of posts and replies. For those comfortable with social media, this should take an hour or two a week. The most important consideration is timeliness. As with most social media, two days later is too late.
Despite the short amount of time mentors spend, we have found the rewards to be great. Many take it as a pleasant diversion from work. Others like the opportunity to work with trainees and see them progress and develop. Most enjoy in sharing our trainees’ enthusiasm for learning. Some find they have competencies they didn’t know they had. Quite a few recognize that they can play an important role in a trainee’s success. We know that all of these things are true.
To become an e-mentor, you need to invest about half an hour in reading some material and completing our online application and agreement for e-mentors. To do so, please click here to begin.
