Desideria Gideon
The Young Leaders Mentorship Programme (YLMP) was started with the aim of providing young individuals with guidance by professionals in their various respective fields, in order to assist them in making sound and structural career decisions.
This is because it has become evident that when young leaders have access to responsible adult role models from within their own fields and communities, it helps create an indelible impact on their professional and personal development.
Mentors (persons with versatile experience and knowledge) are persons who are competent in a particular field/industry, and who are willing to engage and impact mentees with learning and developmental objectives, while mentees are young leaders who are presently undergoing studies/training in various industries with limited experience and knowledge. Both mentors and mentees participate in the programme on a voluntary basis; there are no fees applicable.
The programme reaches its aim by providing an intellectual and semi-social networking platform between mentors and mentees. These platforms exist by means of a personal relationship that is developed between YLMP, the mentors and the mentees, as well as through elected workshops organised by YLMP and hosted by persons of competent skills. Further to that, we also reach our aim by developing our own projects with the most recent project being a book donation run through which we are able to donate first and and second hand books to seven marginalised schools in northern Namibia.
YLMP was created by three black females from the legal field, namely, Vicky Kapuka, Taimi Iileka-Amupanda and Julia Gideon, who experienced a gap in mentorship opportunities in the Namibian community. What sets us apart is our diversity which allows for more creativity and innovation. Early development and continuous mentoring is important in the lives of our youth and this programme seeks to fill that gap by finding dedicated mentors that have the time and capacity to develop and expose mentees to a diverse spectrum of work available in their field of study, as well as help identify career paths and support personal growth. The programme hopes to make a difference in the community, and not just a mere tick-box exercise.