By: Clarice Fu
Mentoring. It’s a familiar idea to most, yet elusive and difficult to define.
To me, mentoring is both an art and a science. It involves careful planning, the support of a well-defined structure and the use of precise techniques. Yet at the same time, it requires immense skill in relationship-building, the ability to understand, motivate and inspire, and of course, a genuine care for the development of others. By definition, it is a process through which individuals gain clarity on their life direction and seek guidance from someone who has “been there, done that”. Beyond definition, it can be a tremendously rewarding, transformative experience for both the mentee and mentor.
Five years ago, our Rover Crew launched a mentoring program out of an organic need to go beyond running projects and “just doing”. We started with some rudimentary practices and several pieces of paper scribbled with our goals. Mentoring has since become a cornerstone of our program. It is one of the most valuable things that we provide to our Rover Scouts.
Having experienced the power of mentoring ourselves, we are extremely excited that mentoring will become a part of the revitalized Scouts Canada program for Rover Scouts. Coinciding with the launch of the new program over the course of the next year, we will share with you how mentoring came about in our crew, key features of our program, some tools and best practices that we employ, and important lessons that we have learned along the way. We hope that this blog series will help to inspire Rover Crews to launch a program of their own!
We invite you to share these articles and to leave your thoughts and questions to help get leaders and rovers across the country excited about mentoring.
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Our next article: The Whys and Hows of Mentoring at 180th Pacific Coast Scout Group . How it all began, why mentoring is important to young adults, and how we conduct mentoring.
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Clarice is an alumni advisor of our Crew and served as President in 2009-2010. One of our crew’s first mentors, Clarice firmly believes in the power of mentoring in helping young adults reach their full potential. Since she started mentoring five years ago, she has coached over 20 rovers scouts, provides training for new and existing mentors, and continues to be inspired by the positive change she sees in Rover Scouts that have benefited from mentoring.