Mentoring Program

 To be trained in the ways of wisdom, in righteousness and judging truly and straight behaviour

Imagine that a distant relative has died and left your child a large estate. Next imagine your neighbour’s child who has not had the benefit of having an inheritance goes to school with your child then after finishing their education, both young people go off into the world to find a job and go about the normal business of life.

The difference would be that your child would have a considerably easier start in life as he/she would not have to get a 30 year mortgage, car loan or even save up for the ordinary life essentials because the distant relative had already worked for them. This is what Mentoring is.

Mentoring has been described as accelerated wisdom where the person being mentored benefits from his/her mentors years of accumulated knowledge thereby avoiding possible pitfalls and taking hold of opportunities. This enables an individual to have a head start in life. King Solomon one of the wisest man who ever lived said,

“Wisdom together with a heritage is good, and a profit to those who see the sun. Wisdom keeps a man from danger even as money does; but the value of knowledge is that wisdom gives life to its owner.”

The type of wisdom that our participants gain in the mentoring program on is not an acknowledgement of academic principles and truths, theorems and scientific facts but the truth applied and lived out in daily choices.  It is important that young people go to school to get an education, however we also realize that this is not necessarily wisdom, which is much harder to come by. It is when an individual takes the truth they know and apply it to life thereby making good choices, building a good character and name for themselves. In school they learn about the human body and

reproduction where they learn the sexual organs and what does what, how hormones are produced and what effect they have … but they display wisdom when they make a wise moral choice and say no to peer pressure, and choose to behave responsibly. It has been said that the man who finds wisdom is one who gains understanding.

In our mentoring program, we endeavor to facilitate our young people gain the skills they need to make wise choices in the challenges of everyday life. This way they will not “mortgage” themselves by caving in to peer pressure, substance abuse and all the other pitfalls of life then having to pay for those mistakes for the rest of their lives.

We do this by :

• recognizing that young people are individuals with different needs, abilities and learning preferences who need to be provided with an environment that gives value and respect to their lives. We therefore endeavor to provide such an environment so that we facilitate their development to be able to live their lives as confident, effective contributors, successful learners and responsible citizens.

We believe that it is important to put down the fundamental foundations/principles in an individual’s life in order to facilitate healthy physical, psychological, social and spiritual development in an individuals life. It is a fact that any building, organization or nation that does not have a solid foundation will eventually collapse. We have seen history confirm this fact through:

  1) the collapse of the Soviet Union, where Gorbachev gave the reason as “The society was suffocating in the vise of the command-bureaucratic system, doomed to serve ideology and bear the terrible burden of the arms race. It had reached the limit of its possibilities. All attempts at partial reform, and there had been many, had suffered defeat, one after another. The country was losing perspective. We could not go on living like that. Everything had to be changed radically

    ii.  On his death in June, it was reported that Michael Jackson was in $400 million worth of debt. A Neverland Ranch to maintain, the singer spent $35 million improving the property, which featured two railway lines, two helicopter pads, its own fire department, a zoo and a plethora of amusement park-style rides. Seventy-five cars, lavish gifts such as the $637,000 necklace he bought Elizabeth Taylor made for some of his outrageous expenses. He was also reported as having spent $25,600 a month on ‘medical needs’

iii.  The Murdoch empire and the phone hacking scandal is another good example of this principle.

All of the above examples show the dangers of not bothering to pay the price of building proper foundational principles. We aim  to facilitate our young people to pay now by working hard to lay down the foundational principles of character, integrity and wisdom in their lives and play later as they enjoy the benefits rather than play now without the proper foundations thereby earning shallow success and paying later with possible failure.

• We venture to provide a variety of learning arenas so that our participants develop a flexibility and the ability to adapt and also so that we can cater for various participant learning styles. This would include experiential learning through personal development exercises, activities in the Duke of Edinburgh Award Program, group work, and information giving.

• It is a proven fact that an individual’s self worth is dependant on “what they solve” in other words what contribution they make in life. Forbes Magazine reports that:

i.        Halle Berry earns $30 per min because of what she is

ii.        Tiger woods earns $175 per min because of what he does

iii.        Steven Spielberg earns $ 675 per min because of what he has others doing

iv.        Bill Gates earns $ 6750 per min because of what he has the world doing

We endeavor to empower our participants to become innovative problem solvers in accordance to their potentials and abilities.  We do this by facilitating them to develop skills in:

a)    Self Assessment