Citizen Sensors | Round 1 | Update 2

We’re wrapping up Week 5 of our Citizen Sensors workshop sessions with the local primary schools, and we’re gearing up to decide what our next steps are. From a programmatic point of view, we’ve learned a lot about working with and coordinating mentors, and we think some of what we’ve learned might be of some value. So here is everything we’ve learned so far about working with mentors.

As mentioned in our first project update blog, we worked with Hawu from UKZN and the DUT journalism department to recruit mentors. Hawu is a science outreach initiative at UKZN whose members are normally 2nd or 3rd year science students interested in giving back to communities and young people through mentorship. Every year Hawu makes a university-wide announcement to recruit new mentors, and select a team from the candidates. The mentors are also involved in other projects, such as mentoring Eskom Expo candidates to enter with strong and scientifically sound projects and the reading club for Grade 5 learners.

As being part of Hawu, the mentors have extensive experience working in different schools doing math and science skills training. The DUT journalism students on the other hand didn’t have mentoring experience, but were still eager to participate in this programme. Therefore, we broke the mentors up into Leads and Assistants, with the Hawu mentors acting as Lead Mentors in their sessions, and the DUT students acting as Assistants. The Lead mentor was responsible for reading through the material, coordinating transportation, and the main presenter in the sessions. The Assistant Mentors were there to pass out materials, assist students on writing activities, and overall, support the Lead Mentors. I think this breakdown worked really well because it clearly put 1 or 2 people in charge and responsible for each session, and also made it clear who was responsible for preparing for and executing the presentation. To prepare the mentors, each week I would Skype (or meet) with the Leads for that week and go over the presentation with them. I also created very details presentation outlines for the Leads to follow along with. None of the presentations or the content was too complicated so it seemed pretty easy for the mentors to follow.

Another valuable lesson we learned was around how to communicate with the mentors. I created three WhatsApp groups — one that included all the mentors from both groups, then one group for Sithengile mentors and one group for St. Theresa mentors. Each week, we assigned mentors to a session, and communicated this over the WhatsApp groups. We also coordinated Skype sessions and transportation over WhatsApp. Using WhatsApp to communicate with the mentors was a really great tool for quick coordination. The mentors are university students and often on campus but not necessarily checking or in front of their email, so being able to communicate with students in a way they are already using on a daily basis made communicating and responsiveness pretty easy.

Initially, I thought to cycle different mentors into different sessions to give everyone a chance, but in hindsight, I think it makes more sense to be consistent and keep the same mentors attending the same classes. While there were no direct issues that came up related to rotating the mentors, there were some students who asked about certain mentors and thought they might see the same mentors each week. I think for consistency and also for building a rapport with the learners, it makes sense to have the same mentors visiting a school. This would have been a bit tough this time around since we only worked with two schools, and we had a large number of mentors, but as we go into phase 2, this is something we will consider.

Another learning was around technology and the content of the different sessions. All of the sessions used some sort of presentation, which required a projector and laptop at a minimum. Also, some of the sessions had videos in the presentation, so some form of internet connection was necessary, or I had to preemptively download the video so that it could be played offline. It became apparent that the sessions were somewhat reliant on technology, and while the schools were more or less prepared and equipped to handle our technological needs, we can’t always assume that they will be.

On the whole, the mentors were really outstanding and made the project a success with their commitment and maturity. From the beginning, we set out a few ground rules, such as instilling a sense of responsibility for the sessions a mentor is assigned to. If a mentor was unable to make the session they were assigned to, it was up to them to get a cover, which only happened a handful of times. We were really pleased with this group of mentors and hope we can continue to work with them going forward.

We will be hosting a feedback session with the mentors in the weeks to come where we hope to get some feedback on the content and format of the sessions, as well as the actual running of the programme with the mentors. In the meantime, here are some of the changes we will be looking to make:

• Same mentors throughout the sessions to create a relationship between learners and mentors.
• More offline sessions that don’t require as much technology.
• Set schedule for the entire session at the beginning to avoid having to do too much coordination.
• Confirm all content prior to start and host training with mentors to be sure that all mentors are aware of how each session should go.

These are just a few of the learnings we have that pertain specifically to how we work with the mentors. We’re sure that there will be more feedback after the feedback session. Stay tuned to see what the experience has been from the mentor’s perspective.