February 10, 2018, Oak Plaza Hotel – Ashesi’s Career Services office held a breakfast meeting to kick-start its mentorship program for second and third-year students at Ashesi.
The goal of the initiative is to help students build guided professional experience through a year-long paired mentorship program. Students who sign up for the program are connected to volunteer mentors selected from industry, corporate Ghana and from Ashesi’s alumni community.
“Navigating through school; classes, project work and building a career can be overwhelming, particularly when not guided,” said Akua Ampah, Career Services Coordinator. “Our goal is that the mentorship program will help ease this journey for the students. By pairing them up with people who have walked the paths they’re hoping to walk, we believe they will get a clearer perspective to add to what they learn in the classroom. For the mentors too, we are confident they will learn a lot as they engage with the students.”
The breakfast meeting, besides serving as the launch for the program, was an opportunity for mentors to meet one-on-one with their mentees for the first time. Overall, the 60 mentor-mentee pairs will be expected to work together over the year.
“I’m quite excited about the opportunity to mentor a student from Ashesi, particularly because I am alumnus, and have gone through similar challenges of being a student there,” said Abdul-Latif Issahaku ‘05, Data and Devices Manager, MTN Ghana. “Getting to meet my mentee and having a sense of her expectations and challenges, and chatting through how I can be helpful makes me excited. Though I graduated some 12 years ago, the challenges and experiences students face are still very similar, so having someone who has already taken this journey, with added experience can be a very useful asset.”
While the program will be formally curated by the Career Services office for a year, the hope is that both mentor and mentee can benefit from a long-lasting relationship that will provide growth opportunities for both parties.
“I signed up for the mentorship program because I wanted to connect with an experienced and more informed person who will guide me, provide career counseling and help in my personal development,” said Angela Antwi-Boateng. I happen to also be a mentor of some high school students myself, so the main idea is to transfer and direct lessons and guidance I get from my mentor to my mentees - it’s more like an inlet-outlet cycle for me."