What is Mentoring?

 

Mentoring is a relationship between a Mentor or wise guide and a younger person known as a Mentee.

The Mentor's role is to guide the mentee through pre set stages in life, or to work with their charge in a certain area of their life, like a career or in business.

The Mentor helps the young person to learn what they need to do to be successful or to assist them in developing new skills. The Mentor can be a friend, a confidante, a counsellor, and at times a task master to bring the young person to their full potential

In working with a Mentee the Mentor learns about himself as well as imparts his wisdom to the coming generation of New Zealanders. We match on a gender basis as this is one of the easiest ways to connect across the generations


So what do they do?


Mentors are people from the community who are able to and willing to let a young person into their life, within boundaries.

While we do have lists of what can't happen, or what they might be able to do when safety is checked and process's are followed, we encourage the mentors to find activities that:

We are clear on our role, we are not offering a babysitting service, nor an entertainment centre.
We don't encourage hours spent on the play station, the internet, or other electronic gadgets.
We hope that the Mentor helps their Mentee to learn activities that they may not be able to otherwise learn.
We don't expect our Mentors to be able to teach all of these things, there are times that the two will learn together new skills, hobbies and activities.
We are not focussed on the activities but the learning skills that are learnt, the attitude that changes, and the possibilities that the young person is exposed to.

We support our 'worth their weight in gold' mentors to enjoy themselves as well, for we are very certain that high quality mentoring that we are becoming known for is a two way learning opportunity.