Solidarity and equality in mentoring
supporting each other
Our project aims to create a self-sustaining online peer
mentoring network.
“Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future. Solidarity involves commitment, and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we do live on common ground” (Sarah Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion).
We are not on the same pathway, but we can walk beside one another - one is not leading the other and there is no clear path. Our paths are emergent, multiple and changing.
Our mentoring program draws on feminist mentoring approaches to counter the linguistics roots of the term mentoring which propose a mentor as "an older, wiser man who rationally guides a less experienced individual presumed to be in need of protection" (Ruth Fassinger & Nancy Hensler-McGinnis, Multicultural Feminist Mentoring as Individual and Small-group Pedagogy).
"Mentoring relationships typically have been viewed as top-down, with the emphasis on what is gained from the mentor by the mentee. Multicultural feminist mentoring relationships, however, focus explicitly on the reciprocal nature of the mentoring relationship and the impact of that relationship on both mentor and mentee. This profound and deliberate disruption of traditional power hierarchies is not without interpersonal difficulties" (Ruth Fassinger & Nancy Hensler-McGinnis, 2005, p. 153).
mentoring network.
“Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future. Solidarity involves commitment, and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we do live on common ground” (Sarah Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion).
We are not on the same pathway, but we can walk beside one another - one is not leading the other and there is no clear path. Our paths are emergent, multiple and changing.
Our mentoring program draws on feminist mentoring approaches to counter the linguistics roots of the term mentoring which propose a mentor as "an older, wiser man who rationally guides a less experienced individual presumed to be in need of protection" (Ruth Fassinger & Nancy Hensler-McGinnis, Multicultural Feminist Mentoring as Individual and Small-group Pedagogy).
"Mentoring relationships typically have been viewed as top-down, with the emphasis on what is gained from the mentor by the mentee. Multicultural feminist mentoring relationships, however, focus explicitly on the reciprocal nature of the mentoring relationship and the impact of that relationship on both mentor and mentee. This profound and deliberate disruption of traditional power hierarchies is not without interpersonal difficulties" (Ruth Fassinger & Nancy Hensler-McGinnis, 2005, p. 153).