The Power of Mentoring
The act of mentoring stretches back thousands of years. In Ancient Greece for example, Socrates mentored Plato, who later mentored Aristotle. In more recent times, prominent mentor – mentee relationships include those change-makers such as Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey, and Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. At One Million Mentors, it is our belief that by investing in the next generation we are helping to shape the architects of a better tomorrow. Mentoring can open doors, inspire, support and encourage people to realise their potential and to achieve their dreams. Mentors can make a profound difference in the lives of their mentee – and in turn, strengthen our communities, economy, and drive social change.
Mentoring brings us together – across generation, class, and often race – in a manner that forces us to acknowledge our interdependence, to appreciate, in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words, that “we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny.” In this way, mentoring enables us to participate in the essential but unfinished drama of reinventing community, while reaffirming that there is an important role for each of us in it.
Marc Freedman – 2014, Founder and CEO of Encore.org and Social Entrepreneur of the Year by the World Economic Forum