IOMS Mentors: Taking Forward the Initiative
Gyan Vigyan Sarita, had been selflessly pursing Interactive Online Mentoring Sessions (IOMS) with a small group of Four co-passionate mentors since 2016. It targets to mentor unprivileged children with a sense of Personal Social Responsibility (PSR). The initiative had its beginning in Chalk-n-Talk mode in May’2012. The upgradation of the initiative to IOMS was with the consideration of constraints of age; most of the mentors in the group are senior citizens. Online education has become a necessity to ensure uninterrupted education of students in the prevalent pandemic. So also is relevance of IOMS.
Few more elite persons have proactively associated in the initiative to mentor students and accordingly a formal WhatsApp group IOMS Mentors was formed on May 10,2021. First virtual-meeting of the group was held on May 23,2021 to discuss concerns and vision in furtherance of the initiative. Salient outcome of the meeting is as under –
1. Meeting started with introduction of all members, who had formally met first time.
2. It was disseminated that a new Learning Center facilitated by Narmadanchal Vidyapeeth starts on May 24,2021 at Bargaon, Dindori, M.P. A social worker-cum entrepreneur Er. Gyanendra Singh, and the school's teachers have volunteered to proactively involve in enabling IOMS through tutorial sessions (problem solving, by students, on the portions mentored).
3. Periodically, motivational Online sessions of Maj. Gen (Retd.) Dr. Yash Mor would be organized for our target students.
4. Er Vinod Shrivastava from Pune would guide students, unable to pursue beyond class 10th or dropouts, on their skill development and creating their startups.
5. Participation of new mentors Shri Sharad Saxena, Brig. Pramod Hoogan, Mrs Pushpa Mishra, Shri Punit Shukla and Shri Anand Tiwari's participation is a reinforcement of IOMS, both in quality and diversity at mentoring.
6. Proposal to conduct Online-Events viz. Quiz, Motivational Sessions, Extra-curricular activities to encourage ingenuity and creativity of students was welcomed. Additions of more learning centers would enhance manifestation of talent and a healthy participation.
7. All mentors would make efforts to create satellite-learning-centers around their habitat and in areas of their affinity, acquaintance and operation. It is essential to imbibe redundancy at mentoring considering age and other personal constraints. This is necessary to encourage younger mentors for continuity of learning of target students as much as sustainability of the initiative. Moreover, passionate-mentoring is a grave necessity to enhance quality of education and creativity among students. It is also necessary to create an effective working model, which encourages younger mentors.
8. In order to give thrust to the above concerns, Two webinars that were planned on May 01 and 02 that were deferred due to widespread Corona pandemic would be rescheduled as early as possible. The topics of the webinars are –
· IOMS Creativity and Entrepreneurship Grow Together
· Interactive Online Mentoring Sessions (IOMS): Potential and Opportunities
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