The Sport Skills 4 Life Skills Alumni Network was formulated in 2020 and it exists as a charitable and educational organisation, to foster a greater sense of community and belonging amongst its participants. This Network has enabled the creation of a formal structure through which ex-participants of the long-standing SS4LS Programme can contribute through various community outreach and fundraising initiatives.
To date, this Network has had a COVID-19 mask handout in the greater Northpine area, supported and attended by Zubayr Hamza, the current Cape Cobras captain and who made his debut for the Proteas in January 2019. A second initiative that is currently ongoing is the Kerria Primary School feeding scheme, situated in Atlantis.
The third SS4LS Alumni initiative within its first year, is the Mentorship Programme that is currently being developed. It forms part of the Network’s strategic objectives of providing continuous products and services to members of the Network and to current participants of the SS4LS Programme. Essentially, the Mentorship Programme is aimed at promoting opportunities for participants in need and to empower these individuals to develop their own abilities and gain confidence to fulfil their intrinsic potential.
An Alumni Pulse Survey was posted on the Network’s social media platforms to have an initial engagement with the Network members, and to gather information from them pertaining to their appetite to participate in the Programme as a Mentor. The initial response was representative of the Network at large and the information obtained was adequate to commence the formal structuring of the Programme and to develop a guideline document for the on-boarding process.
At the time of preparing this article, several actions have been completed or are in the process of completion. It was necessary to define the purpose and goals of the Programme upfront, as to ensure that it aligns to the greater strategy of the Alumni Network. This Programme, to be run as a formal and professional initiative, aims at unlocking current UWC students’ potential and to maintain the mentoring relationship into their first year of their chosen careers. In an ever-increasing pressure environment of completing a degree, applying and being interviewed for a role and experiencing the initial years of corporate environments, students must equip themselves with an arsenal of skills that would make the journey more efficient and less pressurised. These skills are both their technical as well as soft skills, and they will need to have the know-how of impressing future employers.
The SS4LS Mentorship Programme will collate the personal, educational, career and personality information already collected from the potential Mentors, and will be modelled to pair these Mentors with Mentees from the UWC Faculties, for these students to have a means of personal and professional development outside their classrooms. The Mentors will share their knowledge, skills and experience with the Mentees, to help them progress personally and / or professionally. The aim then, is for the Programme to help promote those students’ academic successes, be part of their graduation and maintain the relationship into the initial phase of the professional journey.
The decision to make it a formal process, is geared at collecting data along the way, to understand the “pros” and “cons” of the developed framework of the Programme, to generate lessons learned and mitigation factors, and to understand all the barriers that exist and to break down those barriers with a pragmatic approach. The Programme will be structured, Mentors will be coached to be as effective as possible and it is expected that a platform will exist to share learnings, provide feedback and to close the loop with the Mentees. KPIs (key performance indicators) will be developed and Mentors will be tracked against those KPI targets, to ensure that the Programme remains sustainable and will grow over time.
Interactions between the two participants will generally be online, considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the availability of time for Mentors given their career and family situations, and the Mentees given their study pressures.
At present time, the initial group of Mentors will likely amount to ten candidates. The Alumni Network will be joining forces with the SS4LS Programme, to pair the Mentors with the Mentees of UWC. Subsequent to this, an initial, welcoming / launch event will be hosted by the Network and the on-boarding process will be communicated.
To ensure sustainability, the success of the Programme will be continuously measured, and a feedback loop will exist. It is intended for the Programme to be transparent with KPI performance visually available and regular surveys will be run to measure engagement, satisfaction and personal improvement of the Mentees.
This is an exciting journey and it is believed that the lives of both the Mentors and the Mentees will be positively impacted on.
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