Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
Mahatma Gandhi
One is never too old to learn. At 56 years old, I continually challenge myself to learn new things because I want to enjoy every minute of my life. I am honored to be one of the 17 Filipinas nominated for the May 2014 group of the Mentoring Women in Business Programme which is a one year mentoring program of the Cherie Blair Foundation.
The Cherie Blair Foundation matched me with a mentor who lives in the UK based on the goals and interests I outlined in the application forms. I met my mentor for the first time last night and we had a great time, chatting over Skype. I believe we are great match and look forward to working with him over the next year.
There are a suite of free, online tools for our meetings –Gchat, Skype, Google Hangouts, Viber, etc that will be quite useful. This mentoring program is really exciting for women around the world.
We match women in developing and emerging countries with male and female mentors around the world. Using our online platform, they spend 12 months working one-on-one to achieve key business goals. Participants build their business skills and digital literacy through our trainings, and become part of a global community of committed, ambitious entrepreneurs who are invested in each other’s success.
Many women in developing and emerging markets have the ideas and ambition to become successful entrepreneurs but are held back by barriers such as lack of access to business skills, technology, networks and finance. In response, the Foundation has developed an innovative solution that combines mentoring with technology to offer cross-border support to women entrepreneurs.
The programme boosts confidence, improves business performance and ultimately creates wealth for the entrepreneurs we support.
Mentoring is a great opportunity to help both the mentee and mentor grow. This is an exciting year and I am challenged to meet my goals.
“Encouraging women to become entrepreneurs has the positive effect of helping more women participate in the workforce”
