eMentoring

Aboriginal eMentoring BC is an online mentoring program run out of UBC that targets Aboriginal youth (ages 11-18) across the province.

We pair up these youth with a university student as their mentor to help give them guidance as they go through elementary/middle/high school. It is often the case that Aboriginal students do not envision themselves beyond high school and therefore tend to drop or take easier versions of classes like Science, Math and English. By doing this they are ultimately shutting the door on a lot of opportunities and even intensive upgrading may not give them what they need for post-secondary programs.

Mentors help their mentee set goals, explore interests and provide support while encouraging them to continue on to post-secondary programs. Because there is a huge demand for First Nations health professionals, our primary target for mentors is within these fields but we welcome all genuinely interested university students to partake. Our program has been uniquely developed to resonate with Aboriginal youth here in BC and our semi-structured online curriculum that the youth follow, which we call the Personal Quest, incorporates cultural content from a variety of areas across BC. The mentees navigate through the Quest and you provide feedback on certain parts as they go along. If a topic of interest comes up, the mentor and mentee are free to spend as much time as they wish discussing it. There are no deadlines or time limits, the entire program is self-paced.

The online platform is asynchronous meaning there is no live chat and all messages are filtered to ensure safety of both the mentee and mentor. It’s very similar to a discussion board. Furthermore, because the program is a research project, we do collect information from participants throughout the course of the program.
The program runs from September to June (off for the summer because students are out of class). Depending on when mentees and mentors enter the program, they may be involved for the full school year or only half. Participants are welcome and encouraged to continue on the following school year!