Imagine Hope - Feb 2021
The Mentor Team Experience
Imagine Hope is a one-year blogging project being undertaken by Caitlin Newby as she engages with Imagine LA at the deepest levels and shares her experiences and reflections.
When I signed up to become a mentor, I knew I’d be paired with a mentee, and have a group of fellow mentors – my Mentor Team – to collaborate with. None of us is mentoring in a vacuum, we learned during the training, and mentoring is like a “group project” where we’re all working together on a shared journey, walking alongside the family on their journey.
I was initially a little unsure of what the experience would be like. Not only was I curious about how I would bond with my mentee, but how would I learn to collaborate with my fellow mentors, when we’re all starting as strangers? And virtually, at that? How do you make a team click?
Funnily enough, I was a team of one (not including my FTM—Family Team Manager) for the first few months of my mentorship experience. There was such a great need for mentors that Imagine LA decided not to wait to pair me with my mentee, and they hoped that they would find a match for her mother not too long after. So, for the first month or so, my bi-weekly team call was just me, myself, and Vanessa Monroy.
Vanessa has been incredibly informative and supportive. It is clear from our calls that she cares for her families and mentors, invested in their wellbeing and partnership. She has been able to share about the family’s background and certain life events that I might not have learned from my mentee (she is only 7 years old, after all!). I have felt so supported and appreciated by Vanessa and the Imagine LA team.
Our second mentor, who was matched with my mentee’s mother, joined the team a few months into my own mentorship experience. It is still a small group because our family is small—some groups will have four or more mentors—but I like to think that it makes our team more intimate and easier to coordinate amongst ourselves! Ours is one of the Imagine LA families that are moving into a new apartment in the Marina, but their paperwork has taken longer than most to process. Strategizing ways to keep the girls’ happy and entertained via Zoom, as well as ways to support their mom as she navigates the bureaucratic maze of forms and approvals have been the main subjects of our calls together.
It has been hard to connect during the pandemic. We have bi-weekly phone calls between the three of us to check in, and because of local and federal COVID guidelines we have been unable to hold a get together in person with all of us and our family. This would usually happen at a quarterly potluck, held at the family’s home or a local park, where we could all come together to discuss the family’s progress and/or any barriers they are facing.
I can’t wait to get together with everyone when it is safe to do so—a group of lovely women, talking together, playing with the kids, and all united by a common purpose: the family’s wellbeing.
