mentoring online - two new experiences
06:34, 15 May 2008
.. Posted in techculture and tech to help.. Link
I've been lucky enough to be engaged in two very interesting volunteer online mentoring activities recently. One is informal, with a former co-worker in Afghanistan, an Afghan woman who is pursuing her Master's Degree in development management; I've been reviewing her reports and research and giving editing and research advice. It's an intense and wonderful experience. I would love to take on another such experience with an Afghan female student. What makes this relationship work, I think, is that the young lady and myself worked together for almost six months face-to-face, so we already had a personal relationship before we started working together online.
The other is more formal: Networking for Success project is bringing together online mentors from all over the world with women in Nigeria to explore how women can and do use Web 2.0 tools and other ICTs to effectively develop and advance their work. It's a program by the Women's Technology Empowerment Centre, a Nigerian non-governmental organization working to encourage Nigerian girls and women to learn how to use information and communication technology (ICT) as a means of empowering themselves socially and economically. As part of this mentoring effort, I got to reference an online discussion I co-hosted back in 2003 at TechSoup on Gender and the Digital Divide. It was a discussion of the barriers that keep women and girls in particular away from computer and Internet-related classes and community technology centers. I'll be interested to hear the new perspectives on this issue!
It's a thrill to be doing this kind of volunteering to help women in developing countries in a truly meaningful way! And it's a thrill to continue to explore the realities of online mentoring programs.
