Thu, 28 Mar, 2024

Five Sessions of Mentoring Program Successfully Completed

By Sabin Pathak

Photo Courtesy: Shankar Koirala Students at DWIT are always keen and happy to help others. This helps the students to maintain a helping environment at DWIT. So, studying at DWIT not only provides you with quality education but also with the opportunity to study in a helping environment. Mentoring, as claimed by Mentor Set, is a powerful personal development and empowerment tool. It is a partnership between two people (mentor and mentee) normally working in a similar field or sharing similar experiences. It is a helpful relationship based upon mutual trust and respect. Some of the senior students at DWIT, with their keen interest to help the freshmen, decided to launch a Mentoring Program for the freshmen. The main objective of this program is to promote mentoring relationships between the freshmen and seniors, and encourage active participation by both parties. The first session of the mentoring program was conducted on 3rd November, 2014. So far, five sessions of mentoring program have successfully been completed. Invitation was sent via email to the students of new batch to attend the program. There are 18 students who are actively participating in this program. There are 9 mentors, comprising of senior students studying at DWIT. Seniors are volunteering in this program to fulfill the main objective, “To help and guide freshmen in all ways possible”. The first two sessions of this program were orientation-based, where all the mentors and mentees shared their experiences, interests, hobbies, strengths and areas needing improvement. This created an environment where the mentees and mentors could understand each other. Later, students were given the opportunity to select mentors of their choice. Mentees of a group of two or three were assigned to an individual mentor. The mentees can meet their mentor individually by managing their time, but the overall group meeting would only happen fortnightly. Bidish Acharya, coordinator of this program who is currently about to enter his 5th semester at DWIT said, “Mentoring sessions like these provide the students with 'mistakes done and lessons learnt by the seniors', experiences, failures, highs, and an insight of the road ahead, all compiled in an interesting conversation. So, I think it's really important for the freshmen as they look forward to thrive during their college days." Freshmen, who have so far participated in this program, were satisfied with their mentors and expressed their gratefulness to them. Anushka Maharjan, a 1st semester B.Sc.CSIT student at DWIT said, “The mentoring session organized by our seniors is very helpful for us. But, it has been long since the last session was held. We can gain much more by interacting with the seniors, if the sessions were held more frequently. So, I wish it will continue soon.” Replying to this, Bidish Acharya promised that the next session of the program will be held right after the board examinations of the seniors. Biplav Shrestha, another participant of this program mentioned, “Our seniors are doing a great job by organizing this type of program with the aim to help freshmen. As new students are not familiar with the college activities, academics, rules and regulation of college, this type of programs are really helpful for those types of students. Hoping the next session will be held soon."