Being an Online Mentor: A Real Relationship, A Real Commitment

Originally posted in 2008 - it has been slightly updated since then

A free resource for nonprofit organizations, NGOs, civil society organizations,
charities, schools, public sector agencies & other mission-based agencies
by Jayne Cravens
via coyotecommunications.com & coyoteboard.com (same web site)

Being an Online Mentor: A Real Relationship, A Real Commitment
(What I've Learned as an Online Mentor)

One of the most sought-after online volunteering activities is mentoring another person via the Internet. But while many, many people may desire to make a difference in someone's life by working with that person online, many of these same people also often have a misconception that mentoring online takes far less time and commitment than traditional, onsite volunteering - that it takes just minutes, even seconds, every now and again, rather than an ongoing investment of several hours (yet another myth of online volunteering).

Mentoring someone online takes real time and commitment, because mentoring requires trust-building. Relationships have to be cultivated, personalities and points of view have to understood, and respect has to be earned - and none of that happens in just a few seconds or a few minutes when you might have some time to spare. The work required for online mentoring doesn't happen only at the most convenient time for the volunteer; the mentor has to schedule real time for mentoring to happen regularly, and for questions and comments by the person being mentored to be addressed promptly and fully. A mentoring relationship can actually cause harm to the person to be mentored if the volunteer does not make the relationship a priority, and makes the person to be mentored feel forgotten or not of great importance.

I have been an online mentor several times, including:

one-on-one exchanges with a fourth grade girl in Austin Texas, part of the Sanchez Elementary School Online Mentoring Program, to help build students writing abilities and to reinforce good practices in online safety (2000)
one-to-many exchanges for the Young Caucasus Women Project, recruited from adult students from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in the US State Department's Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX) Program, to help them as part of their training as citizen journalists (2006)
one-on-one exchanges with students interested in careers in international development work, through Open University, where I completed my Master's Degree (2004 - 2007)
one-to-many exchanges for new women bloggers in Kenya, through Fahamu and the Women's Technology Empowerment Centre (W.TEC), to help them learn to use blogs as a method of democratic expression and empowerment (2008)
one-to-many exchanges for the inaugural Blogs for African Women (BAWo) Mentoring Project, focused on women living in Nigeria, to help them learn to use blogs as a method of democratic expression and empowerment (2008)
one-on-one exchanges with a graduate student and former co-worker in Kabul, a young Afghan woman undertaking her final project for her Master's Degree, researching the importance of women leaders to development success (2007-2009); then again when this same former co-worker was studying for a second Master's Degree in Brisbane, Australia (2011-2013).

How did I become involved in these online mentoring experiences?

I sat up the Sanchez Elementary School Online Mentoring Program myself, and wanted to experience the program as a mentor as well.
I read about the three women bloggers projects on one of the various online communities with which I'm involved, and contacted each to become involved.
I responded to a request for volunteers from Open University in their student or alumni magazine (I forget which).
I set up the latest experience mentoring the graduate student in Afghanistan myself, before I left the country after working there for six months in 2007.

The most satisfying relationships for me have been the one-on-one exchanges, where I am working with and focused on just one person. In such online relationships, I feel like I'm not only making a real difference, but also building a very real relationship. The one-to-many exchanges are worthwhile - I do think I've passed on some good information, as well as learning a lot myself - but it's the one-on-one relationships that have been most satisfying for me, personally, and that I feel that I see real results because of the online exchanges.

Not every online mentoring relationship has been successful. In one program, xxxx, those to be mentored seemed unclear about what the purpose of the program was for, and their messages to our private communications platform didn't seem to have any particular focus - I can't tell you much of anything about the students I was trying to help. In the Sanchez program, the mentoring relationships ended when the program ended and the private communications platform was discontinued, much to the disappointment and even sadness of the students involved; for them, their mentors "disappeared."

For all of these online mentoring experiences, what has been most important for me to be successful as a volunteer mentor are:

to know this is going to be a well-run program, affiliated with a credible organization, with a contact person to help me promptly with technical issues and any issues I may have as a part of my mentoring, and with clear, well-stated, realistic program goals that are a part of an overall onsite activity or program (and in the case where I am engaged in one-on-one mentoring with my former colleague from Afghanistan, I wrote out a list of expectations for us both, and we set goals for every semester for us both regarding communications).
to have the program goals always in mind during all exchanges. I often re-read them just before I write, so I can make sure I'm focused on such in all communications with the person or group I'm mentoring.
to set a time every day, every other day, or twice a week -- as appropriate -- to read messages from the person to be mentored or those to be mentored, and to craft an appropriate response. If I'm helping with a specific project or assignment, such almost always has a deadline, and I have to be able to put in the time needed to offer appropriate guidance, proofread an assignment, etc., long before the deadline, so that the student has time to read what I've said, process it and turn in the assignment. In other words, online mentoring is not for whenever I have some time; it's a real commitment, and it means rearranging things in my onsite life to meet that commitment.
to find out as much as possible about who the people to be mentored are, where they come from, what their daily life is like, what languages they speak, how comfortable they are in writing, what they expect of the program and the exchanges with the mentors, and what they know, and don't know, about the mentors.
that people who are not native English speakers, are very young, or are part of a culture where women are not supposed to be talkative or have public opinions, are often quite self-conscious about expressing themselves in writing, and I need to be able to craft questions and comments that are easy to understand and don't sound overtly critical or possibly demeaning.
to appreciate that those to be mentored may come from areas with very different values, very different standards of living and very different beliefs than the mentors.
to appreciate that those to be mentored are not as tech-savvy as me, and therefore, I need to avoid tech jargon and I need to fully, simply explain how to use certain tech tools, such as how to use Google to find resources for a project.
to encourage students to do things themselves, rather than having me do such for them; the goal is always to build a student's capacity in some way.
to maintain a very positive, upbeat approach in written communications, and to write frequently, so that students feel warmly supported by me.
to keep writing those to be mentored even if they aren't responding to my messages every time.
to be careful not to write something that sounds overly critical or could be interpreted as even slightly insulting. Criticism is fine, but it must be surrounded by a lot of sincere praise.
that misunderstandings are bound to happen; I work to avoid them, but when they happen, I work to mend hurt feelings.

Regarding my experiences mentoring my Afghan colleague, specifically:

We use a YahooGroup of our own to communicate. I have the settings on private, so that only the two of us can see the group, let alone access what's inside of it. All messages sent to the YahooGroup also go into our personal email boxes, so we know when something has been added. We use it for messages, to store drafts of her work and my edits of such, and for me to share links to web resources I believe can help her in her research.
I know her, personally - we've met onsite, face-to-face. We haven't seen each other in-person since 2007, but working together for several months in a traditional setting makes a big difference in our working together well now online. Not that online mentoring relationships can't work without meeting "in the flesh", but having had this previous real-time, onsite relationship helped us to be able to work well together online immediately.
I have studied the same thing she is studying: community development, and managing such projects and programs. I also have experience in helping projects to be more welcoming and inclusive of women, an are of special focus she would also like to have.

To date, all of my online mentoring experiences have been via written communications and have been asynchronous rather than synchronous; mentors, and those to be mentored, don't have to be online at the same time. This is all done usually via a special password-protected online platform, so that exchanges are private and can be easily monitored. Sometimes, this platform hides the identities of the mentors and those to be mentored; we know each other only through "handles" or user name; the reason for such a system, is for online safety -- messages are monitored so that there is no way for participants to contact each other outside the program's communications platform.

Would video work in online mentoring? Certainly, provided that all participants:

are very comfortable using such tools entirely on their own, without needing training beyond guidance that could be written in an email
have reliable broadband Internet connections and very modern computers
are in similar time zones
feel comfortable speaking, at least initially, with a "stranger"
feel comfortable speaking with someone who is significantly older, or who may speak better English than they do themselves
have a space with little or no noise around them and few distractions where they may engage in such live video interactions
have clear guidance regarding the purpose of each live video interaction

If you want detailed information on how to work with online volunteers, and how to fully integrate virtual volunteering in to all of your community engagement, including how to set up and support an online mentoring program, see:

The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook

available for purchase as a paperback & an ebook

Completely revised and updated, & includes lots more advice about microvolunteering!
Published January 2014.

Also see:

What I’ve learned as a mentor online.
A blog from November 2017 on what I have learned as an online mentor for a colleague in Afghanistan over the 10 years we've been working together.
List of online culture tools & resources
List of volunteer-related resources
See what else I have done as a volunteer

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