#MentoringAmplifies change, one relationship at a time

National Mentoring Month (NMM) has always held a special place for Couragion. We are so thankful for our Couragion role models who serve as amazing virtual mentors for thousands of underrepresented students. I appreciate how students view our role model mentors as guides.

“I really enjoyed this career quest. I felt my guide knew a lot about his field and was very passionate about it.”

- Black Female High School Student - About User Experience Technologist Role Model

Couragion's digital portfolios were designed to activate mentors as proficient coaches and advocates. Each portfolio gives a detailed view of a student’s interests and values. Mentors can see which work characteristics are important to the student and which careers they like or dislike. Mentors can review the portfolio’s ‘action plan’ for a list of personalized recommendations that help the student to not only learn more about their best fit careers, but also to identify and build the skills required for such jobs. Couragion has done the heavy lifting by curating and summarizing these personalized recommendations for students and mentors so that productive, two-way exchanges can take place around the skill development that matters most.

This type of facilitated, high quality mentorship for students improves academic, social, and economic outcomes. Mentor does an excellent job of measuring the impact of quality mentoring and is a tireless champion for closing the mentoring gap for young adults.

Mentoring.org Mentoring Impacts

Wondering how you can get involved in NMM? Here are a few ways you can participate: 

  1. Today (January 17th) is International Mentoring Day. Celebrate with a post on social using the hashtags #MentoringMonth and #MentoringAmplifies!

  2. Become a mentor for an at-risk youth - 1 in 3 kids are growing up without a mentor in their lives!

  3. You are never too old to be a 'mentee'. Engage in a little 'reverse mentoring' and find yourself a younger 'mentor' to learn about the hottest technologies or cultivate new ways of thinking!

  4. Honor a past personal mentor via a #ThankYourMentor social media post. January 27th is officially ‘Thank Your Mentor Day’. Mark your calendar!

Need some more inspiration? You can access online toolkits with ideas, sample posts, messaging, and graphics from Mentor via the National Mentoring Month 2022 Toolkits.

Melissa Risteff