A match made in heaven!
Wentors is a mentoring organisation specialising in mentoring Women in Tech. During the January meetup of TechStylers, a group also focused on supporting Women in Tech, they announced a partnership with Wentors. With similar aims, and attracting similar members, I thought this was a match made in heaven. As a TechStylers leader, I decided to take a lead and register for mentoring immediately!
Wentors has a great website, which also provides a portal for potential mentors and mentees to register and manage their mentoring relationships. Once registered, each mentor and mentee has access to a dashboard area to keep themselves organised. The site also includes areas for chat, content and feedback. It is super easy to use, and it’s great to have everything in one place.
The power of 2 ...
At the time I registered, Wentors was preparing the International Womens Day 2021 cohort. This would be a very special cohort, called ‘We-Discover’. In We-Discover, each mentor was being encouraged to mentor 2 young women if possible. Once I had submitted my application, I anxiously waited to hear from Wentors about whether I had been accepted as a mentor.
On 1st March I was notified that I had been successful and had been matched with my ‘wentees’. Their names were Amara and Opeyemi, and they are both from Nigeria. Each has a different skillset and very different goals. So it was really important for me to ensure I tailored each of our sessions to deliver their required outcomes.
Learning together
Wentors suggest that mentors and mentees meet at least once a week for an hour, over 8 weeks. Suggested material is also provided, aimed at helping the mentees grow in confidence. A number of live learning opportunities were also scheduled for mentors and mentees to attend together. These included the following sessions from renowned experts in their field;
- Imposter Syndrome with Alison Shamir
- Communication with Tosin Arowojolu
- Personal Branding with Lida Citroen
I found these sessions incredibly interesting, and got a lot from them myself. Kudos and congratulations to Wentors for including the mentors in the training and helping us build closer relationships with our mentees by learning together.
Saturdays suddenly got a whole lot funner!
Initially we had planned our mentoring sessions for weekday evenings, but we quickly moved them to Saturday. This was partly because of the time difference but mainly because of bandwidth. We found the quality of our comms was improved dramatically when the rest of the world was not online!
I’m not sure about my mentees, but it was also nice for me to have something fun to look forward to on a Saturday. Rather than cleaning the house, and other chores, I got to spend time hanging out with my new found and totally awesome friends! Because this is what we became, very quickly.
In addition to the subjects suggested by Wentors, my mentees had some very specific areas they wanted to cover. After our first introductory session, we mapped out the remaining 7 sessions so that we covered each of the points. The weeks passed very quickly, and before we knew it we had arrived at our last session.
The end of the beginning
Luckily for me, my wonderful mentees agreed to continue our sessions! We all feel there is so much more we can achieve together. And I feel so privileged they are allowing me to continue on their incredible journeys with them.
As a ‘thank you’ Wentors kindly bestowed the ‘Recognised Mentor’ badge you can see above. But my best reward is that I now have 2 more amazing young women in my life. Thank you Amara and Opeyemi, for being such an inspiration.