Mentor Program

Who is a ASCEND Mentor?

Most of us can think of people in our lives, more experienced than ourselves, who taught us something new, offered advice, presented a challenge, initiated friendship, or simply expressed an interest in our development as a person. They helped us negotiate an uphill path or find an entirely new path to a goal in our academic, career, or personal lives. They showed us a world larger than our neighborhood. They pointed out talents that we hadn't noticed in ourselves and stimulated ideas about what we might be able to accomplish. They nudged us when we needed a nudge.

Educated and well-informed adult mentors are an important part of the ASCEND TEAM. Mentors are professionals in a wide variety of career fields who can demonstrate through their daily lives the significance and rewards of hard work, focus and perseverance.

We expect most mentoring to take place on the Internet and email, with periodical personal meetings between the mentor and beneficiary. Electronic communication eliminates the challenges imposed by time, distance, and disability that are characteristic of in-person mentoring. Frequent electronic communications and personal contacts bring beneficiaries together with mentors to facilitate academic, career, and personal achievements.

As a mentor one has to offer the following:

Information

Mentors share their knowledge, experiences, and wisdom.

Facilitating Choices

Mentors provide valuable opportunities by facilitating academic and career choices.

Challenges

Mentors stimulate curiosity and build confidence by presenting new ideas, opportunities and challenges.

Support

Mentors encourage growth and achievement by providing an open and supportive environment.

Goal Setting

Mentors help beneficiaries discover talents and interests and define and attain those goals.

Guidance

Mentors guide beneficiaries in reaching academic, career, and personal goals.

Role Models

By sharing stories of achievement with beneficiaries, mentors can become role models.

How to Be a Mentor

As a mentor, you are a valuable resource to ASCEND beneficiaries. As a guide, counselor, and friend, you inspire and facilitate academic, career, and personal achievements. The developmental transitions faced by young people in each of these areas are enriched by your experience, wisdom, and guidance. Your role as a mentor is a mix of friend and teacher. Relationships developed with your beneficiaries become channels for the passage of information, advice, challenges, opportunities and support, with the ultimate goals of facilitating achievement and having fun.

How is this accomplished? There are probably as many mentoring styles as there are personality types, and no one can be everything to one person. The challenge and fun of mentoring is developing your own personal style for sharing the special strengths and skills you have to offer.

Following are a few suggestions for getting started and staying active as a mentor. ASCEND trustees welcome your ideas for suggestions to pass on to future mentors. Happy mentoring!!

Getting Started

To get started as a mentor:

Introduce yourself to the Foundation either through an e-mail or a telephonic call and enroll yourself as a registered mentor. Mention personal, career, and education interests; disability; and involvement with science, technology, engineering, math and art. Get to know each of your assigned beneficiaries.
Explore interests with beneficiaries by asking questions, promoting discussion, and providing resources (especially those accessible on the Internet).
Facilitate contact between the beneficiary and people with shared interests or resources (e.g., teachers, professors, professionals, colleagues at work).
Remember that developing meaningful relationships takes time. Give yourself and your beneficiary ample room to get to know each other.

Staying Active

All mentors are volunteers, and we know that mentoring consumes some of your very valuable time. The following are some guidelines to follow when considering whether you have the time and the willingness to be a mentor.

Log on at least once per week and read and respond to electronic mail messages.
Respond to every personal message sent to you by beneficiary or ASCEND staff.
Communicate with other mentors; act as a resource when possible.
Attend events organized by ASCEND staff whenever possible, and encourage other beneficiary to attend events.
Visit the beneficiaries and their parents at their home at least once a calendar quarter, or a minimum of 3 visits during the academic year.
Visit the school to meet with the teachers at least two times in the academic year. Additional visits are definitely encouraged.

"Netiquette"

Mentors are encouraged to follow these electronic guidelines.

Be respectful of your beneficiaries and their communication/personality styles. Ask if there is a way to accommodate them in the way you communicate.
Avoid covering several topics in one message. Instead, send several messages so the receiver can respond to each topic separately.
Use mixed upper- and lower-case letters. Avoid using control characters or special keys.
Begin the text of your message with the real name of the person to whom you're writing, and end the text with your real name.
Include all or parts of a mail message to which you are replying.
Do not use words others might find offensive, and avoid personal attacks or name calling.
Do not participate in conversations that would not be acceptable to the parents of your beneficiary and/or staff. Remember that program participants are mostly minors!
Do not engage in conversations that you are not comfortable with. Immediately report offensive or troubling electronic mail messages that you receive to an ASCEND trustee.
Remember that an electronic mail message is easy for recipients to forward to others and, therefore, is not appropriate for very personal messages—it's more like a postcard than a sealed letter.
Take advantage of the spell check and grammar feature in your system.
Review what you've written BEFORE you send it.

Framework

The Mentors shall operate under the framework here:

ASCEND expect every Mentor to engage with one beneficiary throughout the academic year.
The Mentor shall provide the Board of Trustees feedback about the beneficiary and their progress in the prescribed form after each visit.
Besides the Mentor's face-to-face engagement at the place(s), the Board of Trustees shall have an one-day program, approximately once every six months, at the ASCEND's offices wherein they will meet with the beneficiary child and his/her parents in the presence of one or more of the Trustees.
It is expected that each Mentor will make at least 4 visits to the beneficiary's home and/or school, totalling a minimum of 4 "field calls" during the entire academic year.
The Mentor will be compensated Rs 600 per field call for conveyance and incidental expenses. Mentors are encouraged to use services such as Ola and Uber for conveyance.
For the required field calls alone, Mentors are allowed a total budget of Rs 2400 per year.
Additional field calls if necessary shall be compensated also at Rs. 600 per call. Mentors are free to determine the number of field calls they feel is required to help the beneficiary succeed in the academic program of their choice.