Introduction

Mentorship is a core value entrenched in The Marybeth Foundation aimed at imparting knowledge, wisdom, or experience and psychosocial support relevant to work, career, or professional development. Mentoring within the foundation will entail informal communication, usually face-to-face during a sustained period of time.

The Marybeth Foundation will be set upon specific mentorship programs that will meet the needs and expectations of all those involved with an aim of enhancing their lives.

• Academic mentoring relationships: this will be aimed towards helping students in universities or colleges to learn skills by studying, practicing and internship programs that will help them succeed in their career paths.
• Personal development mentoring: this will primarily focus on growing in social or leadership skills, or in developing one’s character.
• Workplace mentoring: this will entail partnering new employees with current ones in order to help them learn specific tasks or jobs. They may also be training opportunities designed to help an employee earn a promotion or transition into a different job.

Plan

The program will combine various formats of mentorship programs to achieve its goals in line with celebrating the life of Marybeth Wangui. The foundation will earmark partnerships that involve institutions and individuals in the communications and media industry that show the desire to benefit greatly from the initiative. The process will include selected mentors from a pool of professionals who will work on varied methods that work best and connect all persons involved.

• Traditional mentoring consists of a one-on-one, face-to-face relationship.
• Group mentoring includes one mentor but several mentees.
• Team mentoring involves several mentors with several mentees.
• Peer mentoring consists of a more mutual relationship, where each person mentors the other.
• E-mentoring tends to be one-on-one, but takes place via email and the Internet. [However, the individuals involved in e-mentoring often start their relationship with a face-to-face meeting.]

Outcome

The overall goal of the Marybeth Foundation will be to create mentoring partnerships which will involve mentors who will provide the youth with the confidence, resources, continuity, and support they need to achieve their potential. The partnerships will coordinate a wide range of services such as training, technical assistance, designing public policy campaigns, leading broad-based mentor recruitment campaigns, and collecting data to identify trends and gaps. The result is greater communication and collaboration, more high-quality mentoring programs, smarter use of resources, and most importantly, more young people matched in high-quality mentoring relationships.