The Salvation Army’s Youth Mentorship Program was first implemented back in May 2002 with the aim to train up Youth Mentors who will be equipped with leadership skills to provide care and guidance to youths with special needs. Social workers will be appointed by The Salvation Army to coach these Youth Mentors and provide them with advice, direction and development support along their mentorship journey.
This year CXC was approached to provide coaching support to the program. A total of 9 coaches have volunteered to participate in this project and will act as Mentor Coaches for 16 social workers. These coaches and coaches have had their first face-to-face meeting on 14th December 2004 at the Education and Development Centre of the Salvation Army office in Wanchai.
We would also like to give our sincere thanks to Ms. Monika Parker who has kindly offered to be the Mentor Coach of our 9 coaches, and to Ms. Jaime Simpson who has provided a lively and enlightening briefing to the 16 coachees on coaching concepts.
We believe that through this project, coaching opportunities will be open up to new coaches of our Community, and at the same time, the public may gain awareness of what coaching is. I myself find it valuable to have the chance to contribute to the society while gaining more coaching experience. My “coachmates” have also shared their views:
“Monika, our mentor coach, is great in giving the assurance that we are on the right track. It is the kind of confident we need to build up as new coach.” – Symond Lam
“It is a great opportunity for me to practice coaching in real life. From first coaching session with my client, I found it was a quite pleasure experience. I listened and shared her thoughts and feelings. We focused on the issue and found different perspective to look at it. The more different angles will bring us to different thoughts which did help.” – Nana Wong
"The project provides me a very good opportunity to sharpen my coaching skills and technique as well as to make new friendship." – Katherine Lo
The project has started in January and will last for three months, by the end of which the coaches-coachees will have had six 30-minute phone sessions completed. We shall report more of their experience and learning by then.
– written by Jaime Fung, VC-external of CXC
We are proud to witness the launch of the Joint Voluntary Project coordinated between Hong Kong Coaching Community/