International Mentoring Day Recap | 1.17.16

International Mentoring Day was marked on January 17th of 2016 coinciding with Muhammad Ali’s birthday.

The day was established through the partnership between the Ali Center, Mentor, Epicenter Community and Mentoring for Change. Planning committee organizations included Partners for Youth with Disabilities, Hip Hop Loves Foundation, #CultureFix, Special Olympics, and the University of Tennessee Center for Sport, Peace and Society.

The day was established to highlight the power of mentorship in connection with National Mentoring Month (January) to foster global understanding about the role and effect that mentors have within communities, and to build broad-based mentoring networks. The ongoing collaboration aims to create conversation within local and global communities about the vast and brilliant roles the mentors play in all of our lives on a level that is both cross cultural and intergenerational.

International Mentoring defined by six core principles of Muhammad Ali: confidence, conviction, dedication, respect, giving, and spirituality.

In the lead up to January 17th, individuals and organizations were encouraged to share, through social media, photos, video, messages and stories to reflect on the real life power of mentoring and in particular: (1) what mentoring means to you in real life; and (2) how you define and describe mentoring from real life experience.

The dialogue was captured online through @mentoringday and #MentorIRL.

Our partners at #CultureFix, put together a brilliant Power of Mentoring twitter chat that you can check out on this link: https://storify.com/CultureFix_/mentor

We encourage all of you to jump on your social media streams see the extraordinary stories, community shares, and to continue the conversation by contributing your own personal reflections and life experience as a mentor and/or mentee.

We will be rolling out a social media campaign to capture the mentors of our lives in correspondence with each celebratory months of the calendar year (Black History Month, Women’s History, Autism Awareness, etc.)

Tell us and the world your story — how mentorship has shaped and changed your life!