Over the course of two days in August, Hatua gathered 50 mentors, 11 companies and 168 college and university students in Shanzu for our Annual Student Camp and All Mentors Forum. The two events are the highlight of our tertiary mentoring program because we get the opportunity to meet in person and interact with our students who are normally spread out across the country. The emphasis of this year’s event was threefold: group activities focused on emotional intelligence, the chance for students to meet mentors in their profession of choice, and the launch of our brand new and highly anticipated e-learning mentoring platform.
For many of our tertiary students, joining campus is an exciting experience that also presents new challenges. Led by Anita Akinyi, Hatua’s Tertiary Mentoring Coordinator, students learned and discussed how emotional self-management can be applied in their personal lives, studies, and future workplaces. The Camp allowed students to share and learn from each other as they reflected on past experiences and practiced emotional management techniques such as belly breathing, naming our emotions, positive self-talk and flipping the script on negative thoughts.
Building community
One of the major successes of the camp was providing an avenue for students to network amongst themselves and build community. “It was an interactive event and I was happy to form new relationships with other students, not just with those in my cohort,” said one student during a feedback session after the Camp.
As new relationships were being forged over bonfires and group activities during the Student Camp, The All Mentors Forum offered even more opportunities to network and learn. This Forum is an annual event that brings together Hatua mentors and interested professionals from Mombasa county and beyond for a day of giving back to the community by sharing career-specific guidance with our tertiary students.
This year we were fortunate to have a number of our very own Hatua alumni present to share their career journeys thus far. So impactful were their stories, that one student commented, “I enjoyed every single bit of camp this year, but what stood out to me most was the career talk we had with our alumni and mentor, Sharon Anyango. She helped me understand more about the course I was taking and showed me that there is so much I can do after campus.”
In with the new
Finally, the culmination of our educational content this year was the official launch of our Moodle e-Learning platform in line with the ongoing revamp of Hatua’s mentoring curriculum. Through the platform, tertiary students whose schedules and spread-out locations don’t allow for much in-person mentoring, now have access to Hatua mentoring content anywhere at any time.
Patricia Buyu, Hatua’s Tertiary Mentoring Officer, led our students through a familiarization session with the Moodle platform during the last student session of the camp.
“Students had a lot of questions about the platform, so we set up a support desk to address the individual challenges they had with their accounts. We also provided each with a stipend to cover their internet costs,” Patricia said. “We introduced our students to foundational content on the topic Leading Self and were happy that students appreciated the new approach Hatua is taking. They were particularly thrilled with the interactive videos with pop-up questions that appeared as they watch videos on the platform.”
To see more highlights from our 2022 Annual Student Camp and All Mentors Forum, watch the video below.
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