By Holly Thai
I’ve been a mentor at VillageBloggurls (VBG) for around 4 years. It’s a media based program where a mentor is matched up with a couple mentees and the idea of mentorship and being a role model to them is applied. I joined this group back when I was in 10th grade and I’ve seen it grow bigger each and every year.
I joined midway through year one when there was already a few mentors and mentees in the group. However this didn’t stop me from feeling at home. I was instantly welcomed to the group and I also got to reacquaint with a few friends whom I haven’t had contact with since middle school. VBG very quickly felt like a second home. Everyone was very friendly and welcomed me with open arms. Soon, I looked forward to attending the group every Friday where we did activities together, which included things such as cooking, doing arts and crafts together, etc.
Over the years, VBG has helped me gain and/or improve a lot of my essential skills that are used in everyday life. My communication skills, leadership skills, presentation skill, etc have all gotten better. This is all thanks to the mentor-led sessions that were held. In the beginning, the first few mentor-led sessions I ever did with other mentors were quite nerve-racking (and this was when the group smaller!). Presentations were never my thing, I never liked it and the whole idea of a mentor-led is like doing a presentation in front of your mentees. But after doing the actual mentor-led and getting the experience of talking in front of a crowd, I could see that my communication skills, etc were slowly improving. In time, I was no longer afraid of doing in class presentations nor did I use the words “uhm” or “and” as often.
The first mentee I worked with was Artiana. My very first impression after acknowledging this was, “will this work?” but very soon I was glad she was my mentee. She was everything I wasn’t, and our personality was made to match each other. We were loud and quite at the right times. In other words, she was the peanut butter to my jelly.
The best moment we had together was when we were working on Artiana’s digital story. I specifically remember in her digital story that she had this one line where it said, “She’s my guard and we shield each other.” When this was played during the digital story screening, everyone was in awe of how cute it was and I was just extremely proud to have her as a friend and a mentee.
Sadly, school slowly got in the way. It was hard to balance between school, homework, extracurricular, and personal life. And I believe to this day, I’m having the same exact problem but only worse because of midterm and exams. Poor time management leads to stress and stress leads to chaos. Because of this, my involvement with VBG slowly declined and I found it harder to maintain a relationship with my mentees. Luckily, we were in more solid groups this year but that’s no excuse for a weak relationship. All I can do is my best, and I’m glad that VBG works with me on that.
VBG has been a big part of my childhood. It was one of the things I looked forward to at the end of a week. I don’t regret joining VBG one bit because they’re all I could’ve asked for. Growing up with all these supportive people around me that I knew I could rely on and ask for help or assistance if needed is what every person wants as they grow up. It is an amazing program that has flourish over the years in an amazing direction with educating young girls about their rights and how society works. The memories I’ve made throughout the years at VBG whether it was at a workshop, or a trip will always be precious to me.