The Pay-It-Forward (PIF) mentorship programme welcomed its sixth batch of mentors and mentees earlier in April this year!
YWLC, together with its partners ITE College Central and the International Women’s Forum Singapore, commenced the 6-months programme at the Opening Ceremony on 23 April 2022. More than a hundred students have benefitted from the PIF programme over the years, and there are 37 mentor-mentee pairs for PIF'22. In his opening remarks, ITE College Central’s Deputy Principal Mr Chong Leong Fatt said that while mentorship can provide many opportunities, mentees will only gain as much as they put into the programme. Mr Chong encouraged them to be active participants of the workshops and activities, and engage their mentors as much as possible. Ms Madeleine Lee, Grants Committee Chair at the International Women’s Forum Singapore, echoed these sentiments. Her advice to the mentees was to build long-term relationships akin to good friends or older sisters.
The Opening Ceremony also featured a mentor-mentee pair from the 2021 cycle! Koh Wern Chieh and Tan Wan Ni encouraged mentors and mentees to go into the relationship with open minds. Mentors should remember that their role was to expose their mentees to a birds-eye view of the future and avoid imposing their own values on them. Mentees should not be afraid to bring their authentic selves, trust the process, and be willing to build genuine relationships. Most importantly, participants should have fun! For more advice from the pair, click here. As many participants were first-time mentors and mentees, the event also focused on providing support and training, so that they’d know what to expect in the journey ahead. The organising team was heartened by the overwhelming number of people who volunteered to be mentors, and the curiousity and passion they saw from mentees in the sign-up process. YWLC members Ong Yi Ling and Gwen Liau led the respective mentee and mentor training sessions, providing tips and suggested frameworks on how to approach these mentoring relationships. During these sessions, mentors and mentees participated actively to clarify doubts, worries, and learn from past experiences.
PIF’22 also piloted the idea of a ‘mentoring tribe’ at the Opening Ceremony this year – to encourage participants to make friends and learn from people beyond their pairs. Each mentor-mentee pair is grouped with another pair to form a tribe to share diverse experiences. Participants got to meet their tribes during the virtual scavenger hunt and had fun sharing creative stories.
The event concluded in high spirits, and participants were encouraged to schedule the first meeting with their mentor/mentee as soon as possible. YWLC and its partners are excited to support the PIF’22 participants on their journey ahead!
YWLC’s PIF Mentorship Programme is a 6-month mentorship programme in partnership with the International Women’s Forum (IWF) and ITE College Central. YWLC members mentor budding young adults from IWF and ITE that are driven to learn. Mentor-mentee pairs from this programme consistently learn and bring out the best from each other.
For queries about the programme and YWLC’s Social Impact initiatives, email impact@ywlc.org.sg.
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Organising Committee: Social Impact
Organising Team: Audrey Tim, Dayna Ho, Nicolette Tan, Gwen Liau, Sherryn Tham, Ong Yi Ling, Low Xuan Yi Partners: ITE College Central, International Women’s Forum Singapore Author: Joey Ong
Editors: Rachel Leow, Audrey Tim