My mentees enjoyed the practical tour.
Mentoring has given Awurabena nostalgic feelings as she casts her mind back to her days as a professional teacher. She enjoyed the entire experience and gave her mentees extra value with an organized visit to her facilities at Winglow.
My name Awurabena Okrah, CEO of Winglow Clothes, a leading Fashion and Textiles company in the country. I volunteered to mentor the Fashion and Textiles Group and what a time I have had. The CoRe programme has really been beneficial to both me, as a mentor, and to the mentees. The programme really took me down memory lane when I was teaching as a profession. Counselling and mentoring others is akin to teaching and it’s been a great opportunity for me.
I took researching and preparation for mentoring sessions seriously and brought content down to the level of mentees. I found out that simplifying my presentations by keeping them concise and succinct made it very easy for mentees to understand and flow with.
Using the WhatsApp platform as one of the main mentoring mediums turned out to be very convenient. Not only did it enable texting, but we also deployed audios and, even occasionally, emojis to express our feelings. Thus, it catered for everyone. It offered mentees the opportunity to always go back to review the sessions they missed.
My recommendation would be for the programme to continue with coaching sessions for smaller groups. This should allow for walking them through what they have learnt in a more practical way as well as targeting those committed to the programme.
My mentees were very enthusiastic when l suggested an industry tour of the Winglow facility. We therefore planned a one-day training visit at the end of the programme to enable them to learn from a well-run fashion company showcasing the right equipment, tools and innovative technologies as well as good business practices.
We eventually got to arrange the visit after the programme had ended. That was by far the crowning moment for them. Seeing all the principles we had spoken about being practiced reinforced the lessons we had shared.
CoRe is a very good programme and I highly recommend that it follows through with coaching the mentees.
At the request of Springboard, Madam Awurabena Okrah is one of a few CoRe mentors who has elected to continue supporting her mentees beyond the end of the CoRe Programme. A practical learning tour of her Winglow Clothes factory came off on Friday 29th January 2021.