Introducing Mentorship System

Mentorship System is an open source project I proposed for Google Summer of Code 2018 with Systers Open Source, where women mentor each other for a certain period of time on career development topics. A support system for women to advance their careers and count on each other.

Motivation

In my first year of college, I had a mentor, that helped me get past the blocker of not getting python in the first classes. It made me feel that I wasn’t alone on not being able to grasp programming at first.

I was a student mentor in my 2nd and 3rd year of college and I met some awesome first-year students which I’m still in contact these days. I found very rewarding of passing on the knowledge that I’ve been gathering through my college years. The idea of helping others with the knowledge that already took me some time to gather fascinates me. There are a lot of things I learned during my journey of navigating the Tech industry that I would like to have learned sooner. But it’s never too late.

I know about some women that are interested in switching careers to Tech, and whenever I get to talk to them I try to help them understand how to begin in this industry and some of the steps to take. I’m also giving advice from time to time to a woman I found on Women Who Code slack that is currently in the process of changing to the tech industry and some other friends.

Having said this I’ve seen benefits of helping others and being helped. We can all learn from others’ experiences and retribute with our knowledge by helping others. I feel that we can also benefit by lifting each other up by having a support system, i.e., having someone that we can feel comfortable with asking questions and getting feedback on our progress for a certain goal we may have.

Photo credits go to wocintechchat.com: https://www.flickr.com/photos/wocintechchat/

The Mentorship System

So the idea consists of a mobile application that matches women to help and support one or both parties. One is the mentor that will be a support/accountability buddy and/or give advice to a woman that wants mentorship, for a period of time established by both parties. Some basic features will be:

• A mentorship relation will be between two users only, where both could focus on the mentee’s career development goals;
• Schedule meetings between the mentor and mentee, to agree on each others commitments to the relationship;
• Tasks assigned to the mentee, which when completed become achievements of this mentorship relation;
• Mentorship agreements were both agree on the time period, the topic of mentorship and who’s the mentor and mentee of the relation.

Who are the target users?

Women who are already in the STEM industry (mentors) would volunteer some time, at their discretion, to help other women (mentees) who are new to this industry or are already in it but need some sort of mentorship.

This would not focus only on students, this would target women from any age, background, work in tech experience, and so on. E.g.: a good example would be women switching careers, maybe self-taught — not currently enrolled in any specific educational program.

Mentors don’t need to be experts they can be students helping older women who are switching careers and can help in some way. One criteria used may be the match of fields and/or technologies used between the mentor and mentee.

What are the things mentors can help mentees with?

Topics where mentors could guide, are not restricted to technical advice, it’s about more than that: how to navigate the industry or a certain area of it; public speaking; online presence; blogging; side projects; open source; GitHub; interviews; negotiation; CVs/Resumes reviews; how to use Twitter and LinkedIn; how to deal with burnout.

What are the benefits for the users?

This is supposed to be a safe place for women to lift each other up, become more confident in themselves while being supported by other women while they achieve something important for them and their careers.

Women in tech could get to meet other women in tech. This app could create bonding opportunities between the mentor and mentee. It can help empower women and help in discovering ways to evolve their careers through knowledge sharing.

By helping women navigate within the industry, and make sure they’re not alone we can help women keep having interest in technology and therefore being involved in it.

Photo credits go to wocintechchat.com: https://www.flickr.com/photos/wocintechchat/

What makes this better than other solutions?

Most of the apps I’ve seen are either targeted to students and/or companies, are paid apps or are focused on technical content. I think that Mentorship System would be great since it would not have these constraints.

It is based on the foundations of volunteerism. By being open source everyone can collaborate add features, ideas and help to maintain the app.

This isn’t targeted to a specific demographic among women, this would help anyone from any age, background and from any stage of their career.

This is also a free option for people in need of mentoring, and can’t afford other paid options. The mentorship relation does not need to be focused on tech-related aspects of a career, this would be used with regards to everything related to having a career in Tech.

Finding more about the project

The Mentorship System is under active development on GitHub, so the features and data model proposed initially might change since the proposal submission. In case you want to follow the development here are some resources:

• GitHub repositories: systers/mentorship-backend and systers/mentorship-android
• Join Systers Open Source slack. We discuss this project in #mentorship-system channel.

You can find more about this project requirements and ideas:

• Initial Google Summer of Code proposal;
• Initial pitch presentation slides presented in the Community Open Session;
• Application features documentation (live document);
• Backend documentation (live document).

Remember that this project is being developed open source, so if you have ideas and want to participate in this project development feel free to reach us on slack to contribute with feedback, ideas, or check if there are any issues you can help with. We welcome contributors from any background!

Thank you for reading this post!

You can follow Systers Open Source Medium publication to know updates from the community!

Check out Systers Open Source projects on GitHub and find more about the Systers Open Source community.