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The 2020 SHIELD Saturday Leadership Academy held their mentoring session at the campus of UNCG with over 20 mentees participating.
To start off this session, the mentees and mentors participated in a brief yoga lesson with instructor Jennifer Jennette, Grow Yoga Together. During the yoga session, mentees and mentors learned the importance of assertive communication through speaking, body language and gestures. For example, If a mentee does not want to be assisted by others in the different yoga poses they can simply say “ I do not need help or no thank you or I do not want to be touched” etc. and the appropriate assertion for others would be to politely ask if the mentees need help. In the session, mentees and mentors practiced their ability to focus.
Following the yoga session mentees and mentors sat to listen to the guest speaker, Jeremy Charles, Jeremy Charles Ministries. Jeremy's discussion focused on self-awareness. He began the discussion by asking the youth participants if they happened to know what self-awareness was. Many of them did not know how to answer the question. Jeremy laughed as he remarked, ”I had to Google it myself.” As he exclaimed the definition, he then applied self awareness to real life situations.
In order to have self awareness, what are some things you need to have?” asked Jeremy. Many mentees gave good answers but the answers that stuck out were values and principles. Many of the mentees were actively engaging with our guest speaker as they learned about principles and self awareness. Jeremy explained how important it is to be self aware to choose friends wisely who match your principles, passions and purpose in life.
Following the general session mentees and mentors had the opportunity to participate with a civic engagement group for a bonding session lead by Kalonji Jegede-Roberts, UNCG Catalyst Program leader. He envisioned the SHIELD volunteer mentors and UNCG volunteers working together to create a fun and positive team building experiences through team bonding activities.
The event began by separating volunteers, mentors and mentees into four groups. The first activity helped youth participants find out more about one another. The second activity engaged youth participants in a teamwork exercise where each group had to form the “human knot” and work together to untangle the knot. Some groups were able to successfully untangle the knot. Once every group had an opportunity to untangle the knot everyone prepared for the final activity.
The final activity introduced why mentoring is important. Each group was given about 20-25 minutes to brainstorm and practice a mock mentoring advocacy campaign. The different groups came up with creative ads to share their message about mentoring. All of the presentations were creative and clever takes on mentoring and its importance. Check out the Facebook Live video to see the presentations.
To close out the program everyone took a group picture and did a recap of their experience. As SHIELD continues to help strengthen its youth, the community can look forward to more incredibly inspiring speakers and programs.
This was an engaging session and has set the tone for the next ten weeks.