Mentoring

Pratibha Mitra - A Volunteer Mentor Initiative 

Program Philosophy
ILP has designed a unique volunteer program, called Pratibha Mitra which links an adult volunteer to a child or a set of children who are beneficiaries of a scholarship program.

The students could either be recipients of ILP’s scholarship – Puraskara or Pratibha Poshak- a scholarship initiative by Prerana, another NGO in Bangalore. Several of the children receiving the scholarship are first generation learners. Families are not able to provide the children with the necessary guidance to further their educational aspirations and develop to their full potential. The children need guidance and exposure.

The mentoring programme aims to foster a mentor-mentee relationship between the volunteers and the students so that the students can interact with their mentors on a variety of areas – be it academics, personal difficulties, or even about life beyond their home, studies & schools.

ILP uses two types of models for the mentoring programme: a one mentor to one mentee model for the students pursuing pre-university and college education and a group mentoring model for students studying in high school.

One to one mentoring

Forty mentors are part of this initiative which started in July 2005 with 9 volunteers. They meet their student on a one-to-one basis and assist them with their academics, provide guidance on studying for their exams, careers, further studies and in some cases even facilitate resolution of personal difficulties which come in the way of the child’s education by raising these up with ILP and Prerana.
 

Weekly Mentoring Sessions for High School Students

Mentoring sessions involved teaching the students the “art of learning” – including different study techniques and memory / retention skills. Around 10 students participated in the mentoring sessions for class 10th. Tools such as the Flash cards, Post-It Notes, Marker / Highlighter pens & Mind Maps were made use of to teach the students learn & grasp information quickly from their text-books and retain the knowledge over a longer period. The volunteers also taught the students how to plan their studies effectively using “activity log sheet” and time-tables. Students were engaged in science activities. Since the students had not got an opportunity earlier to conduct such experiments, they thoroughly enjoyed the science workshop.

The workshop-sessions went on for couple of weeks. As board exams approached the focus of the mentoring programme switched towards academic learning and activities such as quizzes and mock exams to help the students prepare better for their exams.

Transitioning after 10th standard

Children who graduated from the 10th standard last academic year were counseled and assisted by volunteers in selecting pre-university courses and diploma colleges. The experience has highlighted an important need amongst these children for career counseling during the transition from 10th to Pre-University or Diploma and after 12th for higher education. ILP plans to bridge this gap.

ILP thanks Prerana, Bangalore for giving us the opportunity to experiment with the mentoring idea and build a model programme for Bangalore. In the year 2007- 08, we expect to scale the programme to cover 150 volunteers and students. The financial assistance to this programme is provided by funds raised from individuals and through our outreach events.