* Margarita Manterola <margamanterola@gmail.com> [2010:08:21 22:15 -0300]: > Mentoring: > > Even though the project is not so visible, it stills receives > requests. The project is currently coordinated by Runa and Erinn. > They would really appreciate some help, though. A woman working as a > mentoring coordinator needs to have good social skills and a lot of > patience, although not necessarily be a DD. **VOLUNTEERS SEEKED!** I should note that my involvement with this has primarily been administrative, and I am happy to help set up any technical aspects needed, but I don't want to be involved otherwise. (I never coordinated actual mentors and mentees.) I am personally looking for someone, or someones, to completely take over this project. However, to describe the responsibilities in more detail: The crucial traits for someone coordinating this are kindness, patience, understanding, and a strong ability to tolerate some amount of tedium. The women emailing us are often shy and lacking in strong community ties. You have to be able to match people with each other and monitor their progress, so that if something happens -- like it's not a good fit or the mentor/mentee get busy -- you can dissolve that relationship in a discreet and respectful manner and make a different match. The way Helen and I were doing it before was that she maintained a spreadsheet with information on it (names of mentors and mentees, who was matched, what people were interested in and available for, and various notes about things like preferences -- some people want only female mentors, for example.) She kept me in the loop, in case she got hit by a bus or something, and we had an email alias (mentoring@double-helix.org) that emailed both of us, so I had copies of everything, but she took care of it. I definitely think more than one person should be involved for this reason, since almost none of this can take place publicly (out of respect for the mentors' and mentees' privacy) unless explicitly requested. But there probably doesn't need to be more than one person doing the actual assignments, other than to prevent burnout. I'm happy to provide more detail, even excruciating detail, if people want it.
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