Africa ELTA mentor programme - February 2021
It is with a tinge of sadness that I say that I have just come to the end of one of the most rewarding projects I have been involved in.
Over the last 3 months, I have been working as a mentor with Sharon Umoti, an English teacher and School Director from Tanzania, on the inspiring EVE & Africa ELTA Female Leadership Mentoring Programme.
The project focused on mentoring women teachers in Africa to enable them to become better conference speakers and was conceived by Sue Leather and Fiona Mauchline, co-founders of EVE and Amira Salama, Vice-President of Africa ELTA.
Selected participants received mentoring offered by EVE mentors for three months. The aim was to equip the participants with the necessary skills to present at international conferences, as well as online and local professional development events. Upon their successful completion of the mentoring programme, the participants were added to the Africa ELTA list of webinar speakers so that they will be able to share and showcase the knowledge and experience gained from the mentoring programme.
Each mentee was matched with an EVE mentor. The idea was for each mentor to offer mentoring for 6-9 hours spread over three months: September, October and November 2020. The time I spent with Sharon was actually much more than this – she was fiercely committed to the programme and keen to develop both presentation and management skills.
The culmination of all of this work came together in an online event at the beginning of January, in which the all the mentees came together to present the talks they had been working on over the previous 3 months.
They did an amazing job and have gone on to have proposals accepted at international conferences since the end of the programme.
I would like to thank both EVE and Africa ELTA for the opportunity to be involved in this programme, and in particular, Sharan Umoti, whose dedication and hard work were inspirational, and who made me laugh out loud throughout.
Sarah Mount, Director, TransformELT
