@henry has been kicking this idea around for a bit of Maker Mentors (my title, not his… title TBD) and I wanted to see if we could get a conversation going, maybe get some interested folks, and see if we can kick start an idea like this. Henry, of course please feel free to add anything you’ve been thinking of as well.
The basics are similar to BBBS (Big Brother Big Sister) in its conception. We would match interested mentors up with interested young people and those mentors would shepherd them through learning “makery” things. Maybe for some its more about electronics/programming/software, for others its more about woodworking, crafting, or metal working.
I think the goal is to mentor them through “thinking like a maker”. Ie, looking at the world around them as something they have the opportunity to shape and change.
Before we get mired in the complexities of this, clearly there’s some concerns on the administrative side of things that we’ll have to address (background checks for mentors, policies around minors and tools, waivers, parent permissions, transport, all of that stuff). I don’t want to downplay those things, but let’s think around those things for the moment and assume we can work through them.
I’m interested in a number of things for discussion:
Who among us might be interested in being a mentor?
What “areas” would you think you’d be good at mentoring?
Are you interested in helping outside of mentoring to help this program along (It would need some volunteer “staff” to make it sustainable)?
What challenges do you see from a program standpoint (again, lets not focus on the legal/administrative challenges, but rather how to make this a good/sustainable program for the participants)?
What additional resources could LMN use to make this awesome?
Does anyone have any experiences in a program like BBBS (either as participant or mentor) that can we can use to inform us?
Answer any or all, or just add to the discussion.
One of the other things I’m interested in as well, is the mentor acting as a networker to connect the student to the right people in our communities. So, maybe I take on someone who’s interested in electronics, but we start playing around with more complicated things and so I rope in @RealCarlRaymond or @michael to help with us with some stuff. Kind of mirroring the way we connect with each other in the space, and maybe encouraging that mindset for them.
Anyhow, thoughts are welcome.