Mentor Guidelines

From Global Voices Wiki

1 IRC Meeting Agenda
2 Mentor goals
3 Curriculum guidelines
4 Background
5 Schedule
6 Web2.0 Categories

[edit] IRC Meeting Agenda

1) INTRODUCING GLOBAL CHANGE AND STUDENTS
2) EDUCATIONAL GOALS FOR THE MENTORSHIP
3) IDEAS FOR THE CURRICULUM
4) USING THE WIKI

[edit] Mentor goals

Objectives for the student’s use of the blog:

- using the blog as a reflection tool
- learning how to use a blog as an advocacy tool
- > the training they go through will eventually produce the largest

Learning goals

- getting introduced to blogging and the possibilities and limitations this medium entails
- learning to write in a way that fits the medium – building a subjective, personal voice
- learning how to get readers and attention to your blog
- learning to build relationship with your readers – to invite people to comment and take part in the discussion

[edit] Curriculum guidelines

For all planning and ideas of curriculum and mentor exercises, see:

http://wiki.globalvoicesonline.org/article/Mentor_Planning

[edit] Background

In September 2009, 30 Global Voices bloggers will be mentoring a group of brand new bloggers. The new bloggers are students from Denmark and Africa taking part in the MS ActionAid education 'Global Change' in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Education for social change

Global Change is a brand new education from MS ActionAid Denmark. The goal is ambitious: Social and political change on a global level through education of young people in communication, social media and innovative organising.

Global Change is a bi-annual 4 month education carried out from MS Global Platform Copenhagen, Denmark.

By participating in Global Change participants will get inspiration, tools and concrete experience with carrying out large scale projects and campaigns. They will be trained to become either New Organizer or New Communicator. Each course is based on a particular case. Autumn 2009-course deals with Climate Change and Climate Justice: the students will get the task to develop and carry out a large scale campaign on climate justice, brining the plight of the poor to the table of the COP15 summit in Copenhagen in December.

Read on at ms.dk/globalchangeenglish

Or go for the Course descriptions:

- New Communicator (pdf)

- New Organizer (pdf)

Or have a look at the illustration of what tools wil be trained (pdf)

The participants

The participants are 20 danes and 10 from our partner-organisations in Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania. Some have academic degrees but little organizational or political/activist experience - while others have no academic training but extensive organizational and political experience. They are from 20 to 42 years old - and we're as eager to meet them as you!

[edit] Schedule

Key Dates (Draft)

August 19/20 - Mentor IRC meetings
September 7 - Phase 1 of course begins
September 1-6 - Students introduced to mentors
September 9-11 - Mentors and students agree on schedule for interaction
October 20 - Phase 2 of course begins, students do fieldwork (Kenya/Denmark)
December - Copenhagen Climate Summit
December 22 - Course ends

A word on the overall Global Change schedule The course starts September 7 and continues until December 22 beyond the COP-15 Climate Summit in Copenhagen. Global Change is divided into 3 phases. The first from course start until October 16 will consist primarily of lectures and tools training and smaller concrete pilots where participants apply their new skills on different audiences. The blog-mentoring-period is in phase 1.

Second phase is fieldwork. From October 20 the participants will embark on their fieldwork in either Kenya or Denmark, doing participatory research, delivering workshops and applying the tools and methonds they learned. Third phase we enter camnpaign-mode. After one month of fieldwork, the participants gather in Copenhagen at the Global Platform Copenhagen and continues training while morphing more and more into a full fledged campaign secretariat - running a large scale campaign on Climate Justice targeting the public.

The mentoring-process Each mentor will be matched with a course participant prior to course start, and the mentoring couple will embark on their joint journey of getting to know eachother from the first week of the course. The participants will have their own blog at a joint blogging site, and will start blogging right away. At first their task is to use the blog as a reflection-tool vis-a-vis the lectures and tools-training they take part ind. Gradually, they will broaden the scope of their blogging - in a continued dialogue with their mentor and other readers of the blog. The activity and eager of the blogger will vary from person to person - some will write a lot, while others probably will find the media and the format odd or difficult to get comfortable with. Ideally, this is where you come in!

We imagine you will spend a couple of hours each week reading posts, commenting, chatting with your mentee and doing 2 or more skype-conversations within the 6 weeks period. As described by Solana, you should be giving an introduction to your local corner of the blogosphere, showing your favorite sites, discussions and examples of online events and campaigns by grassroots or 'netroots' out there in order to inspire and show the potentials of the media.

(As soon as we have laid out the course program in more detail and have our joint IRC chat meeting, we will probably be able to elaborate a little on this section together)