The First Ten Years of Youth Employment

I have read an article in the Economist on youth employment lately and agreed with it. (Issue: 23-29 January 2016; Special Report; The Young; Article Title: Jobs – The walled world of work). It says: ‘“The first ten years (of youth employment ) are essential. They shape careers in the long term,” says Stefano Scarpetta […]

Writing with Non-dominant Hand

Last but not least, one interesting exercise suggested by the Prince’s Trust trainer drives home a key point in mentoring. He asked the mentor volunteers to fill in an application form with our non-dominant hands in 2 minutes imagining we were at the counter of a job center with a long line of other applicants […]

Hard Work

The Prince’s Trust trainer mentioned that for each young person in the program, there are on average 5-6 volunteers assigned to him/her throughout the entire period that the young person is with the charity. There are approximately 6,000 volunteers working for the charity at the moment. This life-changing transformation is quite “labor-intensive” and requires a […]

Celebration of Life

Another suggestion to mentors is to celebrate successes, big and small, with mentees along the way before they reach their final goals. It is a great way to encourage them as the path to the final goal/destination can be long and difficult at times.

Positive Outcome

The volunteer trainer made an excellent suggestion that mentors should focus on positive outcome in all situations without forgetting to provide objective feedback. For example, if a job application is not successful, focus on the positive aspects of the experience as a lesson learnt. Results are not always binary. As disappointing the outcome may look […]

Frog – a Teacher’s Pet?

A few days ago I wrote about the French course that I was not able to sign up for due to the January effect of over-subscription. I am here to update my readers as some of you are curious how that all ends. Well, I am proud (as a teacher’s pet) that my name dropping […]

Another January Effect

Besides the January gym-going, I did not realize that taking language course is another popular January “activity”. Well, I learned it the hard way. It took me more than one week to get through the registration telephone line (and emailing them) trying to re-enrol my French course and the lady at the administration office politely […]

The Best is Yet to Come

On the back of my previous blog on “Giving the Best Shot”, another friend of a “certain age” echoed with it. He said, “I think the best is yet to come and I am definitely not calling this the peak of my life.” Indeed, at whatever age we are, we should explore and find new […]