Mentorship ensures the success of the academically gifted girl

The Africa Girl Child Dialogues (AGCDs) is an annual career mentorship initiative spearheaded by Good Governance Africa (GGA) and its partnership network. It is held on 11 October in commemoration of the International Day of the Girl Child. This year it was hosted in partnership with Boston Media House and had a special focus on inspiring girls to take up careers in the media sector. 

As part of making tangible the dialogue’s commitment to enabling girls education and empowerment, this year the Boston Media House, through a competitive scholarship application process, awarded some of the girls scholarships. This is an important step in averting the financial hurdle that often cuts short some gifted girls’ educational and career journeys.

Since the dialogues’ inception in 2022, they have become testament to the centrality of multi-stakeholder collaboration for structural, holistic and therefore sustainable girls’ education and empowerment interventions. The dialogues’ special niche is career guidance that is designed to ensure that girls pursue their education with an awareness of the career paths available to them through learning from the experiences of women already being effective within the focus sector. It complements on-going national, regional and global interventions by other players focusing on equally important aspects of addressing the wide array of issues that affect girls’ development. 

One of such outstanding interventions is by the Higherlife Foundation. Although its biggest operations are in Zimbabwe, with a presence in the country’s 10 provinces, it has programming offices on the continent that enable a national, regional and global reach. Its portfolio entails investments in education and leadership development, healthcare and sanitation, job creation and rural transformation. Its focus on rural transformation is commendable because mentorship programmes have largely been a facet of private schools yet are most needed for identifying and nurturing talent and broadening opportunities for economic empowerment and economic transformation in marginalised and under-resourced communities.

This need for mentorship in rural and under-served communities is echoed by Zimbabwe’s Maud Chifamba, now a chartered accountant, through her education and career journey. Although she makes no specific mention of initially undergoing a formal mentorship programme, she underscores the role that episodes of mentorship by different people, including her father, family members and teachers played in enabling her to surmount difficult socio-economic odds and forge ahead at various stages of her life. She makes a critical observation that one can only imagine what they have seen and laments at how the talent in rural areas does not thrive because it is not nurtured and the young people there often do not have a template to imagine and re-imagine life from.

Joanne Freeman, in her analysis on mentoring gifted pupils, defines mentoring as a focused form of enriched education beyond what the normal school system offers, noting that it is relevant for students of different capabilities. She states that it is critical for identifying unrealised gifted potential, creativity in high-achieving learners or helping underachievers. 

While some girls start off very promising, a lack of ongoing mentorship and mental health support may be a setback because of the resultant failure to navigate everyday life challenges. Societal expectations and rigid educational systems often assume that gifted girls require less attention and supervision. The misconception is that the gifted girl child or adolescent inherently possesses the means to overcome any problems. Similarly, they often feel pressured to be “perfect” and maintain high standards and when they fail to do so it can engender a sense of shame.

Holding oneself to high standards is good and important. But the girls should be capacitated to handle pressure by seeking help when they need it most. Therefore, being intentional about providing holistic attention throughout the girl’s life cycle is crucial for her optimal performance and success. This attention is especially important as she navigates the different stages of her academic and professional development, as each requires different coping strategies and skills. Failure to address these will affect her mental health and is likely to manifest as anxiety, isolation and depression, which ultimately affects performance.

Effective mentoring provides girls with advice and encouragement, as well as new skills and institutional knowledge. The feedback and guidance from mentors can improve performance and enhance a healthy work-life balance essential for maintaining good mental health.

Freeman, who notes that mentoring extends opportunities for learning, also advises that the best mentors are those at their career peak, rather than retirees, who may resist new ideas. Unfortunately, this may make it difficult to persuade potential mentors to take on mentorship roles. 

In addition, more than one mentor may be needed to address the different aspects of a subject area and life stage. Notwithstanding that close, supportive relationships between mentors and mentees lasting more than a year are central to success.

Drawing from her personal and professional experience in education, Sarah Nyengerai proposes these forms of institutional support for mentorship initiatives:

1. Implementing mentorship programmes that teach mentees various life skills like self-awareness and goal setting.
2. Assigning a mentor or mentors that are honest about their journeys and life experiences. This ensures that recipients of awards don’t feel alone when facing difficulties.
3. Equipping mentors with skills and material so that they can offer holistic support.
4. Creating an environment that allows for a girl to speak out about her problems.
5. Creating “zero judgment” spaces through, for instance, alumni networks or focus group discussions.
6. Facilitating communication channels that allow mentees to open up about difficulties they have with mentors, such as personality clashes.
7. Fostering an attitude of “mistakes are not final” but either mean pause or restrategise.
8. Developing modules and designing training sessions on work/life balance and recovering from setbacks in life, for instance, after a breakup or death in the family that may affect her studies. This is done in tandem with counselling services through campus counsellors. 
9. Calling on guardians and family members with skills to offer support.
10. Mentor-mentee boot camps that provide training for mentors and mentees. The programmes may include talks, knowledge sharing, networking and training. 

Mentoring is a one-to-one relationship that can last for months or years and complements academic learning. A gifted girl can be empowered to reach her full potential and have the life-skills to overcome problems that may be an obstacle to achieving even the smallest wins on their educational and career journey.

Sikhululekile Mashingaidze is a researcher in the GGA’s Peace and Security Programme. Sarah Nyengerai is an academic and freelance writer with a passion for social, cultural, economic and political issues that affect women and girl-children.