Mentoring for women’s empowerment: UN Women presents mentoring manual
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Mentorship programmes are regarded as an important instrument for enhancing employee satisfaction and promoting women’s empowerment around the globe, becoming increasingly popular.
In cooperation with the Creative Development Center, UN Women launched a mentoring programme for women’s empowerment in 2018. Later, the results of the initiative became a foundation for the development of a manual introducing workplaces to mentoring programmes.
The manual, which combines the experience of pilot programmes implemented in 11 companies operating in Georgia and the best international practices, was presented by UN Women on 25 June online. As mentioned at the event, the guide is designed to assist companies with developing and rolling out customized initiatives that specifically meet their needs.
Participants of the presentation discussed what a mentoring programme should include and why it is important to offer such an opportunity, and the representatives of the companies involved in this initiative talked about their experience.
Maya Kobalia, Head of the Environmental and Social Division at the financial inclusion organization Crystal, used to be a mentor herself and described the programme’s benefits: “During the mentorship process, both sides are learning. For example, while being a mentor, I learned how important it is to listen, because when you do, you learn about yourself more. At the same time, you can do more to help the other person first to turn a desire into a goal, and then help them achieve it. The mentoring programme implemented in our company let me see that if we support women in their personal and career development, they will become more productive and creative at work. Therefore, everybody wins.”
The introduction of the mentoring programme and development of the manual is part of the UN Women project “A Joint Action for Women’s Economic Empowerment in Georgia”, implemented with the support of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.