Empowering mentors – in Rome

The course I attended in Rome focused on strengthening our ability as teachers and mentors to guide apprentices effectively, and also to support other fellow adult mentors and teachers. The course was a part of NPA’s strategy to build capacity with Erasmus+ funding.  As a mentor in the NPA, I related the training to the empowerment within our circle of mentors. The aim was to cultivate some good skills and practices as the mentor circle grows and more mentors and apprentices join the NPA. My learning objectives were therefore:

• to refine my mentoring skills and apply strategies tailored to supporting my fellow mentors, teachers and apprentices.
• to gain more experience with collaboration strategies, guiding questions and motivational tools.
• to build connections with fellow educators across Europe, enriching my own intercultural competence and gain useful connections in relation to NPA.

There are two main themes I take with me: The danger of the “Single story”, and how we keep up our motivation by identifying our “Why”.

Our teacher, Kwanza, was an expert in inclusion and equality and we started out by exploring the concept of the ”Single Story”. Basically, this is a kind of story we tell ourselves; or the media, parents, influencers tell us about something or someone. It’s the kind of story that enhances separateness, exclusion, distrust.  

”The single stories create stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story… And they make it impossible to connect as human equals”, says Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi, in the TED talk our teacher showed us.

4. Our teacher pointed out: “You’ve gotta learn how to express your feelings or else they will turn into anger and bitterness down the line.” These feelings have a tendency to form social patterns that spread and are easily inherited. So better find a way to learn about your feelings, passions and motivations to be able to align actions with them in a harmonious and integrated way.

5. Excursions, demonstration sites and travelling are also helpful in consciously integrating stories and these in turn increase the coherent understanding of people and places. I still think of our permaculture LAND centres as beacons of hope in a gloomy world. Also, it has been my experience in many cases, that the more I travel, the more different stories I have, the more fondly I think of a country or a people. And that helps to make me feel at home in this world, despite of recent world events attempting to alienate us more and more.

6. A challenge we increasingly face today, not only as mentors, but in general, is the large amount of fake news and AI produced half-truths that are all over our media spaces. Teaching ourselves and our students to recognise reliable sources and truthful stories is already a big job. We really need to make sure the algorithms are not serving us easy-to-believe Single Stories!

The Dangers of the Single Story was a concept we returned to over the days of training, and I recognised single stories both in my fellow students and in myself. It’s helpful for collaboration to avoid stereotypes and other one-sided opinions and to bring forth a curious mindset instead.

We had reflections and exercises around the “Why”, “What”, and “How” of an organisation or, as I can relate to it, being on a mentor or diploma pathway. “Why, What, How” is a different way of saying “Vision, Mission, Aims”. We explored how to increase or find motivation by becoming more aware of especially the “Why”:

• “Why” we do something is our core purpose and it’s a call to action and to attract those that have the same purpose or vision.
• The “Why” drives decision-making – connecting the emotional and motivational parts of the brain which are responsible for behaviour and decision-making.
• Communicating the “Why” creates a deeper and more meaningful connection and there’s a better chance of a lasting impact.
• We worked for a while with our “Ikigai” – what is it that you want to wake up to and do every day. Ikigai explores what we love to do, what we are good at, what we can get paid for, and what the world needs. When we find what it is that gives us meaning in all of these ways and start to act accordingly, we are close to reaching satisfaction and accomplishment in our lives. For example, being a permaculture teacher is a very meaningful occupation, especially if we can get some pay for it.
• When we are on the permaculture pathway, it can rekindle motivation to check in with our “Why” or Vision to focus on what is meaningful to us. Connecting to the “Why” is also a connection to the heart, while “How”, or our Mission, connects to the head and “What” or Aims refer to the practical hands-on application.
• The four questions (4Q) from Action Learning are often used in mentoring sessions. Asking: “What is going well?”, “What is challenging?”, “What is the vision?” (the “Why”), and “What is the next achievable step?” (the “What”) is a way to refocus on our diploma or mentoring pathways and create momentum.

Kwanza, our teacher, suggested us to look at our morning rituals – how do we start our day and how can we build in motivation and kindle our passion by our morning rituals – both for ourselves and in a course setting?

We shared some different approaches, most of them involved coffee! My personal morning rituals also involved going to the garden, saying good morning to the plants and soil, and taking care of the needs of the chickens, ducks and cat. For me, the grounding, connection and checking in with the ecosystem in my garden, keeps me aligned with my passion for permaculture.

We continued to discuss creating safe spaces and actions to connect with our motivation and passion: 

• Setting a class code, or code of conduct between mentor and apprentice,
• Invitation from the teacher/mentor/facilitator to do, rather than orders/commands to do,
• Using the circle structure to increase equality and participation. 
• Co-creation of the program and activities enhances ownership and increases the probability of turning students from being followers to becoming leaders and independent of their mentor.
• Activate the body – to reduce stress and activate a deeper level of learning – it’s great to include some kind of energiser, game, song, fun, ice breakers. These may also come with a deeper meaning and learning aspect. A good trick for inclusion is to activate everybody early on in speaking and contributing, and a game or song are generally soft ways of doing this.
• I shared how I do Morning circles on our courses, including some kind of movement to connect to the body, connect to the ground, setting an intention for the day, saying good morning, checking in, housekeeping, and then repetition of learnings/reflection from the day before, the program of the day, and finally a song to harmonise in the group.