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Celebrating National Mentoring Month!

This January is the 19th annual National Mentoring Month. Celebrate with the SWE Latinos Affinity Group to learn more about the history of this event!
Celebrating National Mentoring Month!
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National Mentoring Month History and Facts

National Mentoring Month is a campaign that was inaugurated in 2002 to expand mentoring opportunities and raise awareness of the importance in mentoring youth. This campaign is led by the Harvard School of Public Health and MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership, a non-profit organization that was founded by Geoffrey Boisi and Raymond Chambers in 1990.

Since 2002, National Mentoring Month has been supported by U.S Presidents such as Bill Clinton, George Bush and Barack Obama, and there exist Presidential Proclamations in support of National Mentoring Month, such as the ones from 2016 and 2020. In these proclamations, all Americans are encouraged to visit the AmeriCorps site to learn of opportunities to serve as a mentor.

As part of this celebration, several activities are held during the month, highlighted by I am a Mentor Day, International Mentoring Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, and Thank Your Mentor Day. The objectives of this month are to raise awareness of mentoring, recruit mentors to participate in existing programs in schools and communities, and engage organizations to rapidly grow mentoring programs. Several actions have been carried out during the pandemic in 2020 to keep mentoring programs running; some resources available during the COVID-19 pandemic can be found here.

Why Is Mentoring Important?

Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations found that mentoring programs increased minority representation at the management level from 9% to 24%. Rates for promotion and retention for minorities and women increased from 15% to 38% compared with non-mentored employees. The rate of female employees who believe that they can be part of their company’s board of directors is 21% in companies whose boards are comprised of fewer than 30% women. Compare that to 38% in companies whose boards have more than 30% of women representation, suggesting that promotion is an important outcome of mentoring programs in companies.

How is SWE Latinos Affinity Group Supporting this Celebration?     

SWE Latinos AG, which launched a mentoring program for its members last November 2020, is celebrating National Mentoring Month by collaborating with the SWE Mentoring Facilitation Workgroup, posting blogs about the history of this celebration, thanking our mentors through an upcoming SWE podcast, and featuring members who participate in mentoring programs.

Celebrate mentoring on social media with #ThankYourMentor, and follow the SWE Latinos AG on InstagramFacebook, and LinkedIn.

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