Life moves so fast nowadays. Sometimes you want to help others, but you just don’t have the time.
Trina George was like that. A manager for Allstate Insurance in Irving, she had her own kids to raise and higher education to pursue. How could she possibly have time to mentor anyone?
Mentor2.0, a program from Big Brothers Big Sisters, uses technology to power online-based mentoring relationships, a growing practice that frees busy professionals from the demands of more typical face-to-face interaction.
“For me, having a family, working full time and getting a master’s, this is doable,” said George, now matched with a freshman at Kimball High School in Dallas. “We can talk as often as we need to.”
The success of such programs is prompting mentoring experts to rethink traditional models.
“Today’s youth are so used to communicating online,” said Frank Linnehan, interim dean at Drexel University’s business school and co-author of a study on e-mentoring.
via E-mentoring links professionals with Dallas-Fort Worth high schoolers.