Originally posted in 2008 - it has been
slightly updated since then
A free resource for nonprofit
organizations, NGOs, civil society organizations,
charities, schools, public sector agencies & other mission-based
agencies
by Jayne Cravens
via coyotecommunications.com
& coyoteboard.com (same
web site)
Being an Online Mentor: A Real
Relationship, A Real Commitment
(What I've Learned as an Online Mentor)
One of the most sought-after online volunteering activities is mentoring
another person via the Internet. But while many, many people may desire to
make a difference in someone's life by working with that person online,
many of these same people also often have a misconception that mentoring
online takes far less time and commitment than traditional, onsite
volunteering - that it takes just minutes, even seconds, every now and
again, rather than an ongoing investment of several hours (yet another myth
of online volunteering).
Mentoring someone online takes real time and commitment, because
mentoring requires trust-building. Relationships have to be cultivated,
personalities and points of view have to understood, and respect has to be
earned - and none of that happens in just a few seconds or a few minutes
when you might have some time to spare. The work required for online
mentoring doesn't happen only at the most convenient time for the
volunteer; the mentor has to schedule real time for mentoring to happen
regularly, and for questions and comments by the person being mentored to
be addressed promptly and fully. A mentoring relationship can actually
cause harm to the person to be mentored if the volunteer does not make the
relationship a priority, and makes the person to be mentored feel
forgotten or not of great importance.
I have been an online mentor several times, including:
- one-on-one exchanges with a fourth grade girl in Austin Texas, part
of the Sanchez Elementary School
Online Mentoring Program, to help build students writing abilities
and to reinforce good practices in online safety (2000)
- one-to-many exchanges for the
Young Caucasus Women Project, recruited from adult students from
Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in the US State Department's Future
Leaders Exchange (FLEX) Program, to help them as part of their training
as citizen journalists (2006)
- one-on-one exchanges with students interested in careers in
international development work, through Open
University, where I completed
my Master's Degree (2004 - 2007)
- one-to-many exchanges for new women bloggers in Kenya, through Fahamu
and the Women's Technology
Empowerment Centre (W.TEC), to help them learn to use blogs as a
method of democratic expression and empowerment (2008)
- one-to-many exchanges for the inaugural Blogs
for African Women (BAWo) Mentoring Project, focused on women
living in Nigeria, to help them learn to use blogs as a method of
democratic expression and empowerment (2008)
- one-on-one exchanges with a graduate student and former co-worker in
Kabul, a young Afghan woman undertaking her final project for her
Master's Degree, researching the importance of women leaders to
development success (2007-2009); then again when this same former
co-worker was studying for a second Master's Degree in Brisbane,
Australia (2011-2013).
How did I become involved in these online mentoring experiences?
- I sat up the Sanchez Elementary
School Online Mentoring Program myself, and wanted to experience
the program as a mentor as well.
- I read about the three women bloggers projects on one of the various
online communities with which I'm involved, and contacted each to
become involved.
- I responded to a request for volunteers from Open University in their
student or alumni magazine (I forget which).
- I set up the latest experience mentoring the graduate student in
Afghanistan myself, before I left the country after working there for
six months in 2007.
The most satisfying relationships for me have been the one-on-one
exchanges, where I am working with and focused on just one person. In such
online relationships, I feel like I'm not only making a real difference,
but also building a very real relationship. The one-to-many exchanges are
worthwhile - I do think I've passed on some good information, as well as
learning a lot myself - but it's the one-on-one relationships that have
been most satisfying for me, personally, and that I feel that I see real
results because of the online exchanges.
Not every online mentoring relationship has been successful. In one
program, xxxx, those to be mentored seemed unclear about what the purpose
of the program was for, and their messages to our private communications
platform didn't seem to have any particular focus - I can't tell you much
of anything about the students I was trying to help. In the Sanchez
program, the mentoring relationships ended when the program ended and the
private communications platform was discontinued, much to the
disappointment and even sadness of the students involved; for them, their
mentors "disappeared."
For all of these online mentoring experiences, what has been most
important for me to be successful as a volunteer mentor are:
- to know this is going to be a well-run program, affiliated with a
credible organization, with a contact person to help me promptly with
technical issues and any issues I may have as a part of my mentoring,
and with clear, well-stated, realistic program goals that are a part of
an overall onsite activity or program (and in the case where I
am engaged in one-on-one mentoring with my former colleague from
Afghanistan, I wrote out a list of expectations for us both, and we set
goals for every semester for us both regarding communications).
- to have the program goals always in mind during all exchanges. I
often re-read them just before I write, so I can make sure I'm focused
on such in all communications with the person or group I'm mentoring.
- to set a time every day, every other day, or twice a week -- as
appropriate -- to read messages from the person to be mentored or those
to be mentored, and to craft an appropriate response. If I'm helping
with a specific project or assignment, such almost always has a
deadline, and I have to be able to put in the time needed to offer
appropriate guidance, proofread an assignment, etc., long before the
deadline, so that the student has time to read what I've said, process
it and turn in the assignment. In other words, online mentoring is not
for whenever I have some time; it's a real commitment, and it
means rearranging things in my onsite life to meet that commitment.
- to find out as much as possible about who the people to be mentored
are, where they come from, what their daily life is like, what languages
they speak, how comfortable they are in writing, what they expect of the
program and the exchanges with the mentors, and what they know, and
don't know, about the mentors.
- that people who are not native English speakers, are very young, or
are part of a culture where women are not supposed to be talkative or
have public opinions, are often quite self-conscious about expressing
themselves in writing, and I need to be able to craft questions and
comments that are easy to understand and don't sound overtly critical or
possibly demeaning.
- to appreciate that those to be mentored may come from areas with very
different values, very different standards of living and very different
beliefs than the mentors.
- to appreciate that those to be mentored are not as tech-savvy as me,
and therefore, I need to avoid tech jargon and I need to fully, simply
explain how to use certain tech tools, such as how to use Google
to find resources for a project.
- to encourage students to do things themselves, rather than having me
do such for them; the goal is always to build a student's capacity in
some way.
- to maintain a very positive, upbeat approach in written
communications, and to write frequently, so that students feel warmly
supported by me.
- to keep writing those to be mentored even if they aren't responding
to my messages every time.
- to be careful not to write something that sounds overly critical or
could be interpreted as even slightly insulting. Criticism is fine, but
it must be surrounded by a lot of sincere praise.
- that misunderstandings are bound to happen; I work to avoid them, but
when they happen, I work to mend hurt feelings.
Regarding my experiences mentoring my Afghan colleague, specifically:
- We use a YahooGroup of our own to communicate. I have the settings on
private, so that only the two of us can see the group, let alone access
what's inside of it. All messages sent to the YahooGroup also go into
our personal email boxes, so we know when something has been added. We
use it for messages, to store drafts of her work and my edits of such,
and for me to share links to web resources I believe can help her in her
research.
- I know her, personally - we've met onsite, face-to-face. We haven't
seen each other in-person since 2007, but working together for several
months in a traditional setting makes a big difference in our working
together well now online. Not that online mentoring relationships can't
work without meeting "in the flesh", but having had this previous
real-time, onsite relationship helped us to be able to work well
together online immediately.
- I have studied the same thing she is studying: community development,
and managing such projects and programs. I also have experience in
helping projects to be more welcoming and inclusive of women, an are of
special focus she would also like to have.
To date, all of my online mentoring experiences have been via written
communications and have been asynchronous rather than synchronous; mentors,
and those to be mentored, don't have to be online at the same time. This is
all done usually via a special password-protected online platform, so that
exchanges are private and can be easily monitored. Sometimes, this platform
hides the identities of the mentors and those to be mentored; we know each
other only through "handles" or user name; the reason for such a system, is
for online safety -- messages are monitored so that there is no way for
participants to contact each other outside the program's communications
platform.
Would video work in online mentoring? Certainly, provided that all
participants:
- are very comfortable using such tools entirely on their own, without
needing training beyond guidance that could be written in an email
- have reliable broadband Internet connections and very modern
computers
- are in similar time zones
- feel comfortable speaking, at least initially, with a "stranger"
- feel comfortable speaking with someone who is significantly older, or
who may speak better English than they do themselves
- have a space with little or no noise around them and few distractions
where they may engage in such live video interactions
- have clear guidance regarding the purpose of each live video
interaction
If you want detailed information on how to work with online volunteers, and
how to fully integrate virtual volunteering in to all of your community
engagement, including how to set up and support an online mentoring program,
see:
The
Last Virtual Volunteering
Guidebook
available
for purchase as a paperback & an ebook
Completely revised and updated, & includes lots
more advice about microvolunteering!
Published January 2014.
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