Girls helping girls — Skateistan’s new mentorship programme

Our team in South Africa recently came up with the idea of a peer mentorship programme for our female students. This Girl Can is a global campaign committed to creating a community in which every young woman is empowered to make informed decisions, establish healthy relationships and be self-sufficient.

Working with female students at our Skate Schools, we are able to see their struggles to navigate adolescence sometimes. As they face the challenge of moving through physical, psychological and emotional change, a mentor at this stage in a girl’s life can have a broad impact on her successfully navigating her teenage years. We believe that female mentors are particularly important to girls today, as they provide a protected space to receive feedback, support, and guidance.

So, at the beginning of this year, the team at Skateistan South Africa created a mentorship programme, called This Girl Can, that is gender specific as well as culturally and developmentally appropriate. The initiative started in January with the intention to develop as a year-long peer-to-peer mentorship program. Our aim is to educate and equip the young girls of Skateistan South Africa with life skills, such as problem-solving, self-awareness and persistence.

Since this is the pilot year, we are keeping the programme small while we iron out any kinks. In order to ensure that everyone is fully engaged and feels really special, we selected 18 girls who are mentored by peers from other schools.

“Our idea is to create a safe environment where different ideas can thrive and hopefully, develop further how gender equality, social change and social justice should look like here in South Africa,” commented Kelly, Programmes Officer at Skateistan and one of the main engines behind This Girl Can.

• Read the full article on the Skateistan blog

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