My amazing experience with Mentors Without Borders
I am Bob Mbabazi and I work with Educate! Uganda as a program support officer. My first interface with Mentors Without Borders was in June when my supervisor Richard Luuba linked me to Edmond Pruteanu who taught me for one month a very efficient method for goal getting and after that I started being mentored by Philip de Smedt on programming.
My overall experience with Mentors Without Borders
I was trained on how to execute a mental process that leverages the power of the subconscious mind and the relaxation method, which is one of the mechanisms used to relax your body and mind when faced with stressful situations because it enables you to be consistent in pursuing your goals as you encounter discouragement on your way to achieving them.
I have also been able to interact with programming modules for HTML, CSS and Bootstrap so far and this has given me another dimension of life by getting me more and more interested in web programming specifically. I would probably not have discovered such a passion without MWB.
How was the first month of preparation
I found the method taught during the first month very useful in dealing with stressful and emotional situations as it enabled me to improve on my emotional intelligence, an area I had struggled in over the years growing up.
Edmond has been very insightful to me stressing the clear usefulness and need to always practice the method when faced with tough situations that tend to pull me away from achieving my goals. I have tried it several times and it has worked for me.
How the relaxation method and mental process goal/steps helped me after the first month of training
I use it many times while I am doing programming exercises given to me by my mentor as it keeps me focused on the goal of becoming a web programmer and is also enabling me to know the steps that I have to go through to achieve it which are the different programming techniques.
My experience of learning programming so far
When I started the programming modules for HTML, CSS and Bootstrap, my mind was intrigued and every day I wanted to learn more and more. Philip has been such a wonderful mentor, he has been patient with me when the learning was not going so well for me and changed the teaching approach to suit my adaptability to the learning process.
The plan for teaching the mental process goal/steps and relaxation method in January 2019
After going through the goal getting method training with Edmond, we had discussions with Richard, the Director of Program Implementation at Educate! Uganda and he consented to the idea of presenting this method to the mentors who teach the Educate! program in schools. We’ll be doing this presentation during the January Induction when they will be trained residentially and we will get time on the training schedule to train the mentors who can always teach their students the relaxation method and how to think about their goals and the steps they need to take in order to achieve their goals.
The plan for teaching programming to others from Educate!
We also plan to teach 2 to 3 youth who are interested in programming and this is after they have gone through the crucial first month of preparation using the relaxation method and the mental process goal/steps.
This will be done as they will be coming to the Educate! office premises for the training and will be trained by me. We plan to get these students from the mentors and former Educate! scholars in the Educate! partner schools who will be in their holidays next year before they join university.
Originally published at medium.com on December 13, 2018.
