Author: ementoring1

On Monday, Sept 12, the eMentoring program held a community lead orientation at our eHealth office in Vancouver. This was a great opportunity for all of our awesome community leads to meet and share their experiences with one another. Aboriginal eMentoring BC is a province wide program and there are 5 community leads located in different areas throughout the province. The community leads are responsible for mentee recruitment, promoting the eMentoring program, meeting with Chief & council, parents, teachers and answering general questions about the program.

The purpose of the day long orientation was for everyone to meet one another, discuss their experiences in the project and leave with resources to help them during recruitment. Throughout the orientation, a bunch of topics were covered ranging from developing agreements with partnering communities, overview of the mentee curriculum, how to match mentors and mentees, recruitment successes and challenges, the research aspect of this project and more. Overall, everyone had a great time and we all learned a lot from each other!

Our leads and the communities they represent include:

Diane Anthony – Adams Lake Band

Luwana Louis – Sto:lo Nation

Chris Alexander – Okanagan School District (SD23) and Westbank First Nation

Elizabeth Nicholas – Akisq’nuk Band

Nahannee Gillett – Urban areas/Surrey school district (SD36)

We have begun interviewing our potential mentors and have met a lot of amazing people! It’s interesting to see the diversity of students this program has attracted. We have many applicants and in order to interview them all in a timely fashion we have designed a custom interview structure where interviewees are asked a few questions on several key themes. We are happy to say that a large majority of these applicants are very promising mentors and now the next step is for us to complete reference checks, have criminal record checks done for each potential mentor and to decide how we can most accurately assign mentees to mentors. Because we will focus on mentee recruitment in September, matching mentees and mentors will take place afterwards. We will have one or two more scheduled interview sessions in order to fit all applicants in and then before we know it, training will begin and we will be officially launching the project! Time is just flying by!

Throughout the summer, the eMentoring team has been engaged in several mentee recruitment activities. The team’s first stop was with the UBC Summer Science Camp. Talk about a motivated group of kids! Nahannee, our Urban Project Lead, was able to sit down with them during one of their lunch breaks and chat about the program and about being mentees. After an exciting two weeks at the UBC campus, the eMentoring program would be an excellent bridge to maintain their interest in post secondary and also in the Health Sciences. After being allowed to speak with them, not only was Nahannee invited for lunch but was also able to enjoy a drum and song performance by one of the kids!

Next stop was Community Day for the Cedar Science Camp. This was an exciting day filled with fun speeches, activities and an enjoyable song and drum performance by members from the Musqueam Nation. Throughout the day, the team had a chance to distribute brochures and talk to several parents about the program. Many of the parents seemed quite excited and wanted to sign their kids up. This was great to hear as a critical part of this program is getting support from parents! Overall, we met alot of great people and will be getting in touch with everyone over the next few weeks.

After a few wrong turns and semi-correct Google driving directions, we managed to make all our scheduled meetings in the Surrey School District! Each school had very interesting and important questions about eMentoring such as how mentors and mentees would be paired, how the conversations would be monitored and would students receive any credit for participating. Overall, we felt very confident with the positive energy and constructive feedback that we received from each school. It’s great to see the enthusiasm to be part of eMentoring!

As the kids are out of school for the summer, we will be returning to Surrey in September and visiting the same schools again to participate in their Aboriginal assemblies, talk with (potential) mentees and to get these kids excited about being part of eMentoring! Here we go!!

Want to help Aboriginal youth become excited about learning and school?

Want to be a role model and make a positive impact on the lives of youth?

Want to gain volunteer experience and enhance your knowledge of Aboriginal history and culture?

Then apply to be an online mentor. We are currently looking for UBC students from all faculties who are over the age of 18 to be mentors.

As a mentor, you will be responsible for meeting online 2-3 hours a week with your mentee for a minimum of one school year (September – June). Mentors will support youth as they work through a curriculum that covers topics such as career and college/university exploration, goal setting and transition to college/university, challenges and school supports, time management skills and more. Additionally, mentors will also receive training in child safety; self-esteem and child development; activity planning; cultural awareness training (e.g. Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal worldviews on mentoring, understanding cultural identity, Aboriginal culture and history).

If you are interested, please go to the “get involved” section of our website to fill out an application. The deadline to apply is July 1, 2011.

We are excited to announce that the winning entry for the eMentoring logo contest was drawn by Jesse Tobacco from Boston Bar Secondary School. Jesse drew a beautiful logo with many elements representative of Aboriginal culture. The concept of her logo is about traditional community and each of the elements in her logo represents a different idea. The cupped hands represent the unity that comes with community; tobacco represents tradition and traditional methods; elder berries represent traditional medicine; medicine wheel represents health and the eagle represents heritage and culture. We will be putting this logo on our website and recruitment brochures/posters that are going out to communities, teachers and youth across BC.

Lastly, we also want to say a big thanks to all the other students who submitted an entry!

On May 9^th and 10^th, eMentoring visited a number of schools attended by Adam’s Lake Band students in Salmon Arm and Chase.  There was also an information session for Adam’s Lake Band Community Members to discuss the question, “What is eMentoring?” 

Over the two day visit, the eMentoring team travelled to Shuswap Middle School, Salmon Arm Secondary  School (SASS-Jackson Campus), Chief Atahm Immersion School, Haldane School, and Chase Secondary School  to speak with the schools’ respective Vice Principals and Principals.  The team talked about what eMentoring is and the Principals and Vice Principals talked about which students might be a good fit, and how the schools can help support their students through teacher awareness and computer lab access. 

Despite a number of softball and soccer games going on in the community, the information session saw excellent turn-out and participation of Parents, Students, and School District Administrators.  With snacks and juice in hand, the future eMentoring Mentees talked about their favorite subjects and what they would like to be when they grow up, while parents asked about how the program worked and the benefit it would have to their children and community.  At the end of the session a ‘Talking Rock’ was passed around and the session was concluded with everyone’s observant and enthusiastic closing remarks.

It was a real treat to visit with the Adam’s Lake Community and we’ll see you online in September!