BAFF ALUMNI MENTORSHIP PROGRAM
BAFF alumni have unique access to various events and programs to support their professional development. One of them is BAFF ALUMNI MENTORSHIP PROGRAM, which creates opportunities for BAFF alumni to share experiences and further develop their skills as a mentor or mentee.
Mentoring takes place between mentees and mentors who are acting in a non-professional helping capacity to provide relationship-based support. A mentor supports and encourages the professional development of the mentee and provides active guidance to help them achieve their goals. For the mentee, having a mentor provides a dedicated forum to learn, receive coaching and grow their skills. Through advice and guidance, the mentor can help the mentee to develop their full career potential, explore alternative roles and career paths.
The Mentorship program is targeted at different BAFF alumni groups with a focus to support their professional development needs. TARGET GROUPS participating in this program are:
Leadership Academy program participants (school graduates): to advance career prospects and vocational guidance;
Leadership Academy, Professional Internship, Research Scholar, Graduate Scholar programs participants (having less than 2 years of work experience): to support establishing in a work field/ position at workplace;
Professional Internship, Research Scholar, Graduate Scholar programs participants (more than 2 years of work experience): to support changing one’s work field/ industry.
Mentors may direct their mentee to knowledgeable professionals inside or outside their current industry and/or field. Through a mentoring program, a mentee can gain access to important career contacts. Mentees learn to communicate with others in more senior positions, as well as gaining confidence in dealing with people from unfamiliar backgrounds. Mentoring gives a chance to increase confidence and self-awareness through motivation, support and inspiration, improve skill sets.
Not only mentees are getting benefits out of the mentorship. Providing mentorship is an opportunity for mentor to develop leadership, communication and listening, management skills. It can offer lasting career networks, grow one’s professional network, or even can lead to the development of lifelong friendships. Mentors may learn just as much from mentee as their mentee will learn from them! Providing mentorship offers the mentor an opportunity to reflect upon their own journey through professional experiences. Mentorship can provide mentors the satisfaction of sharing their own personal wisdom with others.
Type of mentoring: one-on-one. Meetings can take place online or in person.
Duration: minimum of 4 months.
There should be a commitment to regular communications and interactions, agreed upon in advance. Typically, mentorships start out with more frequent, lengthy meetings and then pare back somewhat once the relationship is established. Once initial, time-intensive training (if any) is complete, the relationship then moves to support/coaching mode. But a general rule would be at least once a week at the initial stages and no less than monthly later on in the process.
It is recommended to have meetings at least 6 times every 4-6 weeks for around 2 hours a time. Mentors and mentees choose the arrangements that suit them.
A productive mentoring relationship depends on a good match. To assist in the process of matching mentors and mentees, BAFF hosts an on-line event where prospective mentors and mentees can meet and interact with one another in a structured fashion, and then provide feedback to the administrators of the Mentoring program regarding their preferences (top three choices) for matching. Based on shared preferences administrators of the program build a final matching.
BAFF Alumni Coordinators provide support and guidance for mentorship program participants. Other helpful resources provided by BAFF:
training for mentors and briefing for mentees in the beginning;
opening event for mentors and mentees to get to know each other and to establish the basis for an authentic connection;
check points for mentor – mentees reflection time and guidance (topical content, mentoring best practices, encourage reflection and ways to discuss next steps) throughout the program;
closing event to celebrate the learnings and achievements.
Interested taking part as a mentor or mentee? Contact Alumni Coordinator Laura at lbacinskiene@ciee.org.