Lend a Hand and Let's Grow Together

Dear donor,

We hope you are healthy and coping well with the new world shaped with Covit-19...

As it is in many countries, schools and universities were closed in Turkey under the corona virus quarantine regulations starting from mid March. Universities started on-line education and many students went back to their hometowns and continue their education from home.

We too made the following adjustments to our mentoring program:

- mentors began to make their monthly meetings with their mentii on-line.

- 8 different on-line meetings were scheduled with mentors to evalaute the development of their mentii; the Istanbul group mentors met on line on 4-5-6-7 April and mentors of the other participating branches in different towns met on-line on 11-12-15 April.

- 25 on-line trainings to prepare the students for their future careers, such as interview techniques, CV preparation, effective presentation techniques, time management were scheduled for our mentii students. 

- During the month of May, we will be planning our next year communications and hope to go back to one-to-one meetings once the quarantine restrictions are over.

We hope to continue our project with increasing number of menti students and mentors next school term and depend on your support as always,

Gratefully yours,

Links:

• Project website (in turkish)

Dear donor,

We are pleased to report that project goal for our 8th year is reached and surpassed.This year 386 university students and mentors from 32 CYDD branches have started their meetings. Apart from 18 Istanbul branches, project is now in 14 other towns in the Marmara, Ege regions, in southern towns of Adana and Çukurova and in 2 branches in Ankara.

Our team of 34 volunteer trainers have given 31 mentor and mentii trainings and mentor-mentii introductory meetings were already held in the branches.

We have also given e-mentoring trainings on-line and now have 8 e-mentoring pairs making it possible for volunteers living abroad to mentor students on-line. We aim to increase our e-mentoring pairs in the coming years.

One important achievement of this year is taking part on "www.mentornity.com" web mentoring platform which will enable all the branch coordinators and headquarters coordinator to monitor all 386 pairings on line. Every mentor and mentii pair is being encouraged to write their meeting reports on-line to be viewed by project coordinators. Next step will be to make on-line applications that will enable automatic pairings and a technical infrastructure is being prepared for this purpose.

Kind regards,

Dear donor,

We are starting our 8th year with 32 CYDD branches and 350 mentor and menti pairings.Mentor and mentii trainings are being held in 18 Istanbul and 14 other branches all through October on the weekends and pairings will be done in November.

The mentor and mentii pairings were so far done manually but as the project develops and numbers increase every year, this becomes increasingly difficult. This year a web platform is being designed and is going to be used to coordinate all mentor-mentii meetings and all announcements will be made through this platform. All branches will have access to this platform and they will be briefed on how to make maximum use of it.

We also aim to make the mentor- mentii pairings with a software program designed for the project through the same web platform. We believe the platform will be very useful in all stages of the program throughout the year.

Below are some photos from this year's mentii training weekend.

Thank you for supporting our program.

Dear donor,

With your support we have come a long way...2019-2020 school year will be the 8th year of our project. We are motivated and enthusiastic as always and believe we will easily achieve our goal of 350 new mentor-menti pairings with 33 CYDD branches. This means 7 new CYDD branches will join the program and organize their own teams.

So far we succeeded in making 1092 pairings, increasing the number of CYDD branches and mentor-menti pairings every year.

In the beginning, we had a professional advisor and trainers; in the last three years trained volunteers took over all the trainings and local organizations. In the last years, CYDD branches started to take greater responsibility in local organizations.

One local project coordinator's observations: "I am the mentorship project coordinator of our branch for the last 6 years. One of our scholarship students was an introvert, seldom speaking girl who went frequently to her hometown whenever she could..A year later in the mentorship program she has already become more extrovert and started to make eye contact while talking. This year was her second year in the program and she had a different mentor. This year she look happier and I thought she had really grown.When we all gathered for the final meeting of the year, she shared her joy of graduation and said she was going abroad for her masters. Her mentor was also overjoyed and said she would love to mentor another student next year.

So as long as we have you as our supporter and friends of CYDD to mentor our scholarship students, we are sure this project will continue to grow geometrically...

Kind regards,

Links:

• http://www.mentorluk.cydd.org.tr/

Dear donor,

At this point in the project mentor-menti pairings are complete, the pairs have already completed most of their meetings and evaluations are being made in the CYDD branches. In the meantime menti students of Istanbul, Izmir and Mugla were given supportive educational trainings that will help them to start their careers.

In Istanbul 6 day long trainings were held in three locations and groups were limited to 15-20 students

-Excell trainings 1&2 by Oracle Operations Executive in Oracle offices

-Presentation techniques (2 days) , CV preparation , interview techniques and new generation leadership trainings were given by CYDD mentors in CYDD Headquarters

-Self knowledge, values , strengths, creativity and leadership by Anadolu Insurance Human Resources assistant manager in Anadolu Insurance offices

In Mugla, CYDD branch organized two seminars that mentis and mentors attended: "Communication between individuals"and "Efficient CV preparation".

Izmir branch also organized a 2 days communication seminar in April.

We are hoping to hold these trainings and seminars in all of the 11 cities taking part in this project and to extend our project we need your support as always...

Best regards,

Links:

• http://www.mentorluk.cydd.org.tr/