By Saio Marrah
One of the mentors of “Walk a Girl up Mentorship Walk” programme, Jayne Flynn-Sankoh, has urged young girls to believe in themselves by taking up leadership roles, wherever they find themselves.
She made this call to many young girls at a Mentorship Walk programme organised by Mirror Africa and Sponsored by Defence for Children International. “Inspiring Girls and Young Women for Leadership and Participation” was the theme for the event held at the De Code Lounge in Freetown on Saturday 18th June, 2022.
Sankoh who is a lawyer and activist, described a leader as one who develops initiatives and work towards achieving those initiatives and admonished the girls not to get gratification from others before identifying the qualities they possess.
She highlighted three key things namely, passion, career path, and interest, which she encouraged the girls as mentees to work towards identifying, if they want to achieve in life.
The Executive Director of Mirror Africa, Simeonette Uwanie Fontis, in her statement highlighted the composition of their setup of over 20 mentors and more than 200 young girls as mentees.
“The essence of the walk is to move out with women that have broken the barriers, women that are in leadership, for them to mentor girls to tell them about life, experience and what they need to do, the steps they need to take to make sure they are successful people in society or how to make sure they develop themselves,” she said.
Fontis indicated that they did not lookout for mentors that are considered to be in high position or influential, but people in communities that have made real impact who they were able to identify to mentor the young girls and that the mentorship relation will endlessly continue between the mentors and their mentees. She said the essence of selecting mentors that are not influential people in society is to make sure the mentees can easily have access to them.
She also mentioned that some of the mentors are elderly people in society or in families that have made impact in society, and considered as role models.
She however warned them not to rely on their friends for counselling or advice because they have not got the necessary understanding and capability.
The Executive Director of Defence for Children International, Abdul Manaff Kemokai described mentorship as an activity between two or more people with someone in the middle that brings inspiration, change education and many other positive influences.
He encouraged the girls “to attach practicality” into their lives because some of the subjects that are offered in school and even university do not apply in real life when they go into the world.
He called on the young people to be taking into cognisance and put into practicality whatever they learn from their mentors which he said could be an inspiration in their lives.
He also advised them to be solution solvers of the different challenges in society and not to shy away from narrating the different problems in their communities that include poverty. He said for one to be useful in society, that individual must be a person that brings solution to the different problems.
Saving money is another issue he encouraged them to work towards. He said they can either save one thousand Leones out of every two thousand they earn or set a target that by the end of the year, they should have saved a certain amount of money.
While saving, Kemokai said they should also think about a business mentality that they can develop and put into practice.
One of the mentees, Memunatu Kamara said she had learned that she should first set a goal that is to be achieved and also talked about facing her fears which she said she learnt from her mentor.
Another mentee Isata Bangura said she’s been inspired on career path. She talked about learning how to love one another by not putting others down because you want to climb the ladder.
Copyright ©Politico Online (20/06/22)
