One of the most effective routes to a wiser world is an adult making a personal investment in the future of a young person. Whether it be formal or informal, we think everyone should be practicing the art of learning and growing from each other. This is why mentoring, coaching, and advising others is a core behavior of 1000 WiseTribers.
With such rapid-fire change taking place, more valuable than domain knowledge is how we think about the world we live in. This why WiseTribe is investing in a mentoring initiative which was largely inspired by the wise words of Margaret Mead “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” To help build our program, we would like to gather your thoughts on what makes mentoring compelling via this short survey.
Last week on social media we asked what are the personal and collective benefits of mentoring . Below we’ve taken a stab at sharing our thoughts on this important questions.
Mentoring, an exchange of Energy & Wisdom
Studies show that mentoring makes a significant impact on adolescent well being. However, mentoring is not a one-sided value exchange. When a mentoring relationship truly flourishes, there is an exchange of value between both parties. Mentoring becomes a delightful dance between wisdom and energy. Coaching young people keeps adults socially relevant and on their toes in an increasingly fast paced world. Mentors are rewarded mentally and emotionally for helping young people become more reflective, more expansive in their thinking while coping with an increasingly complex world.
Mentoring for a Wiser World
Every day we get a glimpse of the challenges facing us in the near future, including climate change, wealth disparities, racial and geopolitical conflict, world hunger and mass extinctions. These challenges require the next generation of citizens to be vision driven, enabling them to understand an increasingly divisive yet interdependent world. We all need to reflect on the world that is evolving to understand the relationship between the parts and the whole. This is especially true for our youth now.
Our Junior WiseTriber program will employ the life experiences of mentors to help prepare our youngsters for complexity and continuous, rapid change.
Mentoring enables both the mentor and the mentee to stay relevant and informed, empowering them to master evolving communication practices such as social media and old fashioned face-to-face conversations. We help the mentor and the mentee to work together to develop ingrained talents for coping, personal mastery and making the most of learning relationships.
Mentoring Junior WiseTribers
Mentoring is at its core a leverage tool for each of us to impact the quality of life in our communities. By preparing our youth for the issues they will be facing, we aspire to “future proofing” their lives, preparing for rather than denying, the risks AND the opportunities we are all facing.
As we roll out our Junior WiseTriber mentoring program, we aspire to many beneficial outcomes including completing high school; steady advancement through higher educational levels; fruitful, energized and employable workers; reduced problem behaviors; heightened self-esteem; life satisfaction, and healthy lifestyle and life choices. If we can help achieve these benefits then we truly will be establishing a wiser world.
We welcome your participation in our mentoring program by joining our pilot project of mentors for the coming school year. To learn more, please contact us by emailing to [email protected].
