Essay_Mentoring

 

 

 

 

MENTORING

A PANACEA FOR SUSTAINABLE GROWTH & DEVELOPMENT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abstract

It has been established in ancient times and affirmed in this present times that “no man is an embodiment of knowledge”, people with different lifestyles that is unproven have gained more skill and knowledge by  leaning forward on those living in another level of paradigm that have been through tough times and overcame the hordes, understood the concept and secrets of their struggle which at the end both parties inform and involve each other to pass on the mastered method, this process have become what we term as mentoring.

This essay examines how sustainable growth and development could be achieved with mentoring where young adults are brought into the structure, livelihood, business places and leadership stands to establish them with reference to their mentors and also its examines past accounts, present and the future prospect about mentoring relationship, tasks to be accomplished and formalities about the way the mentor-mentees do interact on relevant and comparable issues and by taking the qualities and attributes constant and also varying by analyzing critically the future trends of communication which is a fundamental object to achieve a good mentoring program.

 

 

 

 

 

 

MAIN ESSAY

Mentoring is a phenomenon used to describe the process by which a leader with a life and philosophy of responsibility worth mimicking entrust himself for an extended period of time to a few faithful, fervent and gifted emerging leaders to aid and guide their growth to a fresh leadership style and equip them to reproduce themselves in the generation of leaders to come. Mentoring is practiced by mentors and protégés where mentors provide, advice, shares knowledge and experiences, and teach using a low pressure, self-discovery approach which structure of teaching cuts through using an adult learning versus teacher to student model no matter the age differences, and being willing to not just question for self discovery but also freely sharing their own experiences and skills with their protégé who observe, question, and explore.

Mentoring is a practice that has been around since as long as human began to relate with each other, in various sectors and corners of life; from the timeline of Plato, Aristotle with the manner they use their philosophy to control a certain degree in their societies and also taking a cue from the mythology about a friend of Odysseus entrusted  with the education of Odysseus’ son Telemachus to tutor him the way of a kings and also to religious gatherings of Christians and Muslim about the relationship between Jesus Christ and Prophet Mohammed respectively and their followers with the manner they influence the community they find themselves, for example, even during ruthless reigns of empires especially the Roman Empire which someone like Apostle Paul was caught in between, his teachings and methods became an invaluable asset and gift to this present times which the Christians still practice daily . In the modern civilization, mentoring has been used by individuals to develop their interpersonal skills and also by organizations to nurture and grow their employees. Practicing mentoring takes an informal or a formal program; the application solely depends on the part of life the mentee/protégé desires to pursue skilled knowledge. Mentors have always been seen to possess certain characteristics which include commitment, up-to-date knowledge, time & energy, focus, learning attitude and good reputation for developing others especially the young minds.

Youths have been tagged with been leaders of tomorrow today and has leaders they must possess the attribute, qualities, core values, philosophy and ethical principles to lead a certain group, class, team as envisioned by them. With mentoring serving as a model which can make them leapfrog in actualizing the set objective of becoming a leader with unique set of skills by learning from those that have been there and achieve the same set or comparable purpose through listening to their success and failure stories such as their personal scenarios, anecdotes and case examples because they offer valuable and often unforgettable insight which must be shared, by doing this mentors who can talk about themselves and their experiences establish a rapport which over time develops the emerging leaders and the process makes them tap into continuous learning that is not an event, or even a string of discrete events; rather, it is the synthesis of ongoing event, experiences, observation, studies, and thoughtful analyses that would shape the entire relationship among both parties and also enables them to search, find solutions for a particular issue and also this relatively enables growth and development with the youths in their respective society.

In modern societies where building a viable and having a strong standard has been an epitome of a better society which is bent towards improved living conditions and principled livelihood by the masses where they would neglect criminal offences, indiscipline and nonchalant attitude towards their environment which is condition that states the degree at which literal education is positioned. In achieving this kind of society, which the founding father foresaw, the labour of the fathers and heroes should not been in vain by taking cognisance of losing their freedom and struggles with the villains, a result a nation like South Africa is benefitting from the struggles of a man- Nelson Mandela who did not compromise his standards and so many other heroes, mentors and role models exist today in the world such as . Learning about the historical facts about the country such as the civil wars, great discoverers in history classes with respect to establish the basis such occurrence and why the greed of some people has made such outage and cruelty by upcoming children through formal or informal approach through reading, studying in classes has been a mark of sustaining a better society; a concept used by the developed countries especially United States, England and few European countries, where in classrooms a form of mentoring has been established where career talks by fathers of children, mother sessions in the same class with other children would come and speak about what he his doing, how to get to that level and how he has set a standard about living and moral principles about his discipline. This had ensured a process of transition of knowledge from the old, skilled and experienced to the young ones replacing them or who would someday replace them.

In addition, recent times around the world in context with government officials whether elected or appointed and their certain degree of credibility has always been in question with their conducts of disbursing the public funds and property has deteriorated exponentially which result is observed as bad leadership and character through their bribery and corruption and unethical methods of ruling. This has made people to be sick and tired of having a credible electioneering process and a true democratic institution in place by them. The setback accrued within such unwholesome practices could be highlighted by the idea that a credible relationship with the government and the people cannot be derived, and finding an alternative route is best, every aspiring leader should understand that they are an image that young and old, women and children would want to be identified with relative to the fact that a certain degree of mentoring is displayed which is not direct and informal. However an important element of the mentoring relationship is setting and facilitating clearly-defined learning objectives; with this fact standing in place as a basis of good governance would be extracted from such model and the people would follow and anticipate change within the loop of government officials.

Different stage of civilization that has evolved, people today have fashioned out a way to acquire the best out of mentorship concept by having few or different mentors who had gone through a specific task and had successful triumphed. They choose and follow from a pool of mentors to serve a purpose either directly or indirectly, formally and informally such that they would carve out the best from them. They communicate regularly with the mentors on the basis of effective relationship whereby each experience is a key to succumb an assignment or a task and the role of the mentors regards to coaching, counselling, facilitating, and networking which would take a form suitable to every mentor for a successful process.

Furthermore, for on going communication and those who are seeking for mentors in their diverse field, the advent of Web 2.0, the user generated content, social networking sites such as “myspace”, “facebook” and the new social networking site on the internet called “twitter” has played an important role in helping achieving a formidable result through connecting with different mentors from all around the world who are seasoned and skilled. A view from facebook has made possible that groups can be created that would allow mentoring group to be created and enable people to join from every continent, where messages can be exchanged through the internet, status notification can be displayed and this has been made easier by twitter which is based solely on the status concept “what are you doing”, mentors can indicate what they are doing and what they want to do, which would be followed up by their mentees. The Internet has made it possible that choosing a mentor has nothing to do with the territory we reside. They can be close, far or near but the basis of communication is still upheld by chat response, telecommunication, video conferencing, As much as the mentee might never have the chance to meet the mentor but they duly enable that they share ideas, inspiration and motivation process through the mentor. Though this channel, if youths who are aspiring to be task solvers, ground breakers and seekers encourage themselves to use the act to foster national development. 

Mentors as we know them today are regarded as wise men in ancient times, since the beginning of time they have been telling us that all we achieve, or fail to achieve, are the direct result of our thoughts. What the aged wants are men and women who have the nerve and the grit to work and wait, whether the world applauds or jeers. There are those who have broken away from poverty and tough circumstances, who have never allowed these negative influences to infiltrate their souls. Ultimately, a human being is wealthy not because of what he has, but because of what he knows. What he has, he can lose through disaster obsolescence or theft. What he knows, he can never lose unless he loses life itself. Thus, his real wealth is a characteristic of his thinking not any physical assets. Great accomplishments are always the result of images translated through words and action plan. The interplay between ideas and the action steps that follow which can constitute mentees life. The way to be great is to know that you are great; and to know is to master your thoughts and emotions- to raise the mentees consciousness. The higher the thought, the clearer the vision, the way of mentoring helps capacity building with humans.

 

 

Afrigrowth National Essay Competition 2009|Akindele Oyeyemi| Page 9 of 9

LLP…GO LIVE (LOCAL LANGUAGE PROGRAM)

The much anticipated LLP…Go live campaign went live right here in Ebonyi State at Annaworld café, Water works road, Abakaliki. We started with the how people whether youths and old can benefit from discovering the true potentials of information technology and work together to empower their community by using desktop software provided by Microsoft and tools to users with interfaces in their own language which smoothen the progress of the Local Content solution implementation. Furthermore, we discussed how the ideals and potentials of Language Localization Packages of Microsoft in Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo can be applied for daily use and how to achieve and maximize the three key interrelated areas of the unlimited potentials; Transforming education, Fostering local innovation Enabling jobs and opportunities, where each is crucial to developing sustained economic opportunity. For youths and students, since majority are under influenced by the western civilization, they understood how they could learn language parts and words they do not understand or remember. For Business solutions, Computer training school owners can attract those whose are not English spoken and lots of others.

There were pass by people from different works of life who appreciated the gesture of the LLP and immediately demanded for the package to be installed on their systems and those who doesn’t have, requested it to saved on there flash drives and the instruction packages from the leaflets/flyers did the rest to show how they can install it on their systems and also flyers were distributed and purposely left in other cafés, eateries, restaurant and public halls e.t.c

The objective of the LLP was achieved here at Ebonyi State above what was predicted and the future of preserving our languages which is part of our culture and tradition solely depends on how we further integrate the innovation in our daily lives and the freedom to choose what to utilize, medium to interact with people not familiar with English Language has also ensured we are closing the digital divide.

From a desk at Pastoral Communication Center, Mile 50, 6km from Annaworld Cafe, we here are saying

LLP…Go Live all the way

COMMENTS FROM FEW PARTICIPANTS

“ I sincerely congratulate Microsoft Nigeria for the dream come through, and a very big thank you to those who dedicated their time and money to make the programme a success. The idea of translating the three main languages in Nigeria; Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa into computing world will make things easier for those who don’t understand English.

Also , it educates from my own part, which am an Igbo, it educates because some words in English Language that I don’t understand in Igbo language, this has enabled me to know the meaning of the words. Like I said before, it’s a wonderful program and a great idea, opportunity to be among the few Nigerian that made History today. Keep it up and we hope for the best.”

Adieme Miriam (miriam_adieme@yahoo.com), 300 Level student in Department of Psychology, Ebonyi State University,(EBSU)

“I feel LLPis absolutely amazing schemea very good means of preserving the Nigerian culture together with technology Advancement. Hope to see the Mircosoft Office soon”

Bardi Mattew Ifeanyi(matex772000@yahoo.ca), Computer Science graduate from LAUTECH, Ogbomoso, Youth Corp Member in Ebonyi State.

“I want to say congratulations to Microsoft and all the programmers involved to make this happen, this innovation will go a long way in educating the masses because there are lots of people who wants to familiarize themselves with computer but language barrier has impeded them. For, instance I am an HP GET-IT Trainer i.e. “HP Graduate Entrepreneurship, Training through Information Technology” which focus is on how to bridge the business challenges and technological solutions together and one of the challenges we are facing is that some of the people find it difficult to understand the language rules, and with new development from Microsoft it will go a long way in achieving part of the aims of HP GET-IT, also I can see opportunities for the people here. Finally, I like to appreciate the Microsoft Youth Ambassador here i.e. Akindele Oyeyemi for a job well done here in Ebonyi State for interpretation of the Microsoft project. At this point, I will congratulate again Nigeria, Congratulation to Microsoft, Congrats to PIN and other affiliates. Thank you”

Gbenga Okunowo (gbenga070@gmail.com), a graduate of Olabisi Onabanjo University, a Database Administrator| WEB STRATEGIST |HP GET-IT CERTIFIED TRAINER

“I believe the LLP…Go Live Initiative is a great innovation and it’s an important step towards preserving the culture of the Nigerian society. This definitely has innumerable advantage because it is a move towards a sustainable economy”.

Samuel Olawale Niyi (wale1310@yahoo.com), graduate of Electrical and Computer Engineering, FUTMINNA, Youth Corp Member in Ebonyi State

Food and energy Crisis

The crisis the world is faced with today stems from web of events which sprout out in different pattern in the world, from the wars and civil crisis in different continents, to the climatic change we face, from the weakening of the dollar which is the benchmark of oil trading and the craving of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries willing to make similar profit of their commodity led to the rocketing of crude oil price and the ambition of seeking an alternative led to the discovery of bio-fuel, which have been hailed as an answer to fossil fuel burning and climate change – a clean, renewable energy that can reduce industrial nations’ emissions of greenhouse gases, blamed for global warming, never mind about the utilization of food crops. Ethanol producers in US and Brazil use maize and sugar cane respectively as raw materials and are the largest producers; a major element that the Bush administration made to cut dependence on oil from foreign and hostile countries.

According to Economics, human’s basic need is food, which no doubt is a scarce commodity. This is in relation to its inadequate availability and use for energy which is needed for running daily routines i.e. businesses, transportations, even for extreme conditions where there is shortage of electricity for manufacturing and processing companies to meet market demands of households. No doubt the crisis would cause a horror in the future if extreme measures are not taken. In all continents, impact of economic depression has been felt, with job cuts by companies to meet target profits, European Countries such as Ukraine borrowing from International Monetary Fund to cushion the despair, uneasiness to combat the climate change with variation in weather condition which has led to low harvested crops and resulting to imports in Africa, the gloominess of the market system from Stock Exchanges in Asia, steeping downwards daily which is an area of manufacturing of machinery and electronic equipment. Food and Agriculture Organisation Director noted, “that as a result of high food prices, the number of hungry people increased by about 50 million in 2007”. We are now at a crossroad to seek for the necessity of living, the struggle to survive when we cannot have our basic daily needs.

Living standards are in downward trend by the impact of the high pitch of food and energy crisis, which daily is becoming rampant. The circumstances in Africa, Asia and other parts of the world is very frightening, same reports were practically experienced in various continents that families stopped sending their children to school and instead put them to work like street hawking, extremely poor ones have been forced to beg, significant number of people were found cutting on meals -taking two meals daily instead of three and also swapped to substandard food items, I wonder what happens in countries they survive with an income less than a dollar per day, where they are mutilated by poor economic management by their respective governments in conflict rages. Also, noticed that people have been selling both fixed and variable assets such as electronic gadgets, lands, cars, stocks and bonds at cheap values to cope with the inflation and borrowing at higher lending rates. It was also discovered that people have switched to self-medication, this is a major setback to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals pledged to be fulfilled by 2015, where development bank speculated “that high food prices are unlikely to fall dramatically before 2015” and citing the Commonwealth Finance Ministers Meeting that “the current food and energy crisis will make meeting the Millennium Development Goals even harder to reach”. What is next?

To ensure sustainability, local processes in various nations is the best practice to ensure we have a global reality in subduing the prevalent crisis, where concentration should be giving by various nations to local farmers, who are more efficient and less profit driven than larger farmers, tax cut on produce and more loans should be allotted to them to procure farm machineries and utilities, they should be assisted through Land reform acts, building of modern storage facilities. We could ensure that governments’ tend to spend less or totally divert funds for war such as USA government spending a colossal amount estimated at 3 billion dollars for war in Iraq, Afghanistan, emphasis to governments’ on restraining the research and development of biological and nuclear weapons while such funds should contribute to human, capital and sustainable development. Also, reflecting on parts of the global environment which has led to nations to prioritize the imports over local production of food crops, agencies such as UN, FAO and Civil Societies should start abandoning policies which are overstretched and affirm policies that will backup more production of local produce and restriction of imports and less exports of food crops except selective and scare commodities needed in different countries that cannot be grown and also driving the wealthy countries re-commitment towards meeting the MDGs timeframe. In energy sector, the concept of nationalism must be introduced; self production for self consumption where African oil should be for Africa and Americas’ for America, this would result into self-sustainable development.

Leaders are talking and showing concern for the future, Indian Finance Minister said in a statement, calling an end to subsidies for food-derived fuels that “In a world where there is hunger and poverty, there is no policy justification for diverting food crops towards bio-fuels” and in addition, the World Bank reported that “US ethanol ate up nearly all of the increased global maize production from 2004-2007, when the crop’s prices increased by 83%, also Wheat, soya, edible and palm oil prices have been hit due to increased bio- fuel production”. The last songs may have been unheard about the world crisis that has crept to every home in every continent, if action does not follow their comments but cautious consideration is agreed and interest of the society is exerted, the future would not be what it used to be.

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How can young people who feel powerless today realize they are in the majority and enthrone a democratic order that works for the majority?

Like always said, “Men are born, Leaders are made”. Leadership based on youthful rebelliousness, the drive of young people to challenge the status quo and find a better way through thick and thin of all paradigm of life with flaws and well proven ideas about a society. Considering the Nigerian society, with youngster as the majority of the populace, with frame of mind of leadership based on power tussling and undermined efficiency, among such bright youngster ranks are stooges of the failing preceding generation, appointing and selecting such youngsters in positions and places that they are not competent of managing. The exceptionally few among the majority who no doubt could be tested and dependable but without the synergy for corruptible practices to ascend to apex positions are considered powerless and are not given the chance to exercise and make available the amenities the society deserves.

With consciousness of liberty and recognizing that they constitute the majority, with self sustaining order giving rights for young people with reverberating ideas, promoting the principles that will turn around the society. Through engagement in participatory grassroots development strategy using facilitative skills to draw new directions out of others.   With the percentage population of illiteracy estimated at 59%, the programme should cut across all age group relatively providing and controlling prescribed or allotted resources (financial, human, natural), to assist in every day living and articulating a subconscious effect, outcome of such which would generate the critical result on the long run. Performances within the age bracket of the entire population build trustworthiness within the majority.

 Any youngster with critical knowledge that could alter society direction can show leadership skills can draw ideas for new directions out of people, the powerless youngsters having a sharp vision, ethical mission and divergent core values that would transform the society should challenge the unworthiness of the depraving servant leaders as so called, If our society must transform to a haven on earth, sacrifices needs to be made and powerless young people should be the driving point, Youths are the leaders of tomorrow, why can’t we start acting like one now.

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