At MENTOR, October marks STEM Mentoring Month. This is the perfect time to shine a light on the programs and mentors preparing young people for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. As part of our commemoration of STEM Mentoring Month, we collaborated with our partners, TheDream.US, the nation’s largest college access and success program for DREAMers, and Microsoft, to host a virtual STEM career coaching event to leverage mentoring as a tool to close the networking gap.
The networking gap has both social and economic implications in a young person’s life. Having a supportive and connected network can be instrumental to a mentee looking to join a career field that they may not have access to otherwise. Additionally, mentorship is a retention tool. Mentors can offer mentees support to help them stay on a career path and achieve progressive growth over time.
But historically, networking has been seen as inaccessible to many, so events like these help mentees gain the experience and practice needed to continue this work moving forward. TheDream.US scholar, Genesis, shared, “I found out that I don’t hate networking as much as I thought I would. It always seems like a daunting task. Everyone was very nice, and we learned a lot. I learned to be confident because I have something to offer.”
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