Mentor/Mentee Program Participants - TOES Niagara (Tools of Empowerment for Success)
At the Tuesday, February 14 General Meeting, Kithio Mwanzia and Maya Hassan will be speaking to members on behalf of Toes (Tools of Empowerment for Success) Niagara.
Toes Niagara (http://toesniagara.ca/) is a mentorship program founded on research indicating racialized youth are less likely to have natural mentors and are in greater need of formal mentoring programs. Research also shows a correlation between culturally focused mentoring and positive racial identity and better academic, psychosocial, and health outcomes for Black adolescents. This program is a regionally specific, culturally relevant, and locally developed bilingual mentorship initiative geared for Black children and youth in targeted communities and open to everyone.
Kithio Mwanzia, mentor and Maya Hassan, mentee will speak about this program. Kithio is a Network Manager for the Southern Ontario Network for Advanced Manufacturing Innovation (SONAMI), a regional 9-institution partnership aimed at partnering with industry to develop disruptive solutions. He will address Black youth mentorship, education, and how it impacts outcomes for individuals. Maya is an exceptional student who is passionate about social justice issues. She will speak about the impact of the mentorship program on her, (including having a mentor one on one) as well as her thoughts about Black youth and education. They will comment on how we, as members of the community, can support this program.