Mentoring

Budding mental health care professionals, researchers, and advocates often wish to devote their careers to redressing global mental health care inequities. A seasoned worker in the field can help a young professional navigate her career. Our e-mentoring program helps potential mentors and protégés to connect.

Need a Mentor?

Congratulations! You’ve decided to set out on the journey of discovering what you can contribute to global mental health and well-being. You may have practical questions. How can I meet others who are doing work similar to mine? What’s the best way to form collaborations between NGOs and research institutions? Who can tell me how to evaluate my program? Are there any tricks to getting funded to do this work? Finding a mentor may be one way of getting answers to these questions.

Be a Mentor!

Mentoring is a personal relationship in which one shares his or her experience and acts as a guide, role model, teacher, or sponsor of another person. A mentor helps to empower the mentee so that he is able to use the experiences, talents, and skills that are unique to him.

Getting Started

First, complete the mentor or mentee application form and submit. All applications will be screened, and you will receive e-mail notification of your mentoring match.

Tips for E-Mentoring

Keep the content of your exchanges confidential
Agree on the frequency of communication (daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, etc.)
Make a commitment that is realistic and manageable for you

We recommend that mentors and mentees make an initial 6-month commitment to regular communication.

A few tips for getting acquainted

Share your backgrounds
Where did you grow up?
Was there anything in your past that led you to the work you do?
Where do you work?
What do you like about your current job?
What led you your current position?

Share your career paths and strategies
How did you choose your career?
What are your main career interests?
Who and what resources helped you along the way?
How do you manage work and family responsibilities?

Establish goals for the mentoring relationship
What do you, as a mentee, hope to learn?
What do you, as a mentor, hope to learn or impart?
Consider what contacts you may want to make
Consider what contacts you can facilitate

Closing the Gap

Search for mental health programs in your region or other regions of the world. We encourage you to contact other programs/organizations. Get to know your global mental health colleagues around the world. Through these connections we hope that exchange opportunities and dissemination of ideas will occur. If you are an organization that would like to engage volunteers to join in your work, you may post this information when you register your program with SEWW. If you have special skills in grant writing, advocacy, service development, program management, evaluation, or other areas, find out if an organization can benefit from your expertise. In this way we can help to close the gap in funding, growth opportunities, and service provision.

Let us know about your experiences as you develop relationships with other professionals or organizations. Write and post a story for “Stories from the Field.”