Importance of mentor-mentee relationships | UNICEF

Earlier this month, we celebrated International Youth Day, a global moment to promote conversation around the issues facing young people today. With this year’s theme being Intergenerational solidarity, our office in Bosnia and Herzegovina saw it as a perfect opportunity to celebrate some of the mentor-mentee relationships we have fostered that are helping to strengthen and sustain our efforts for children. By sharing our knowledge, perspective, and experience with each other, we are working together to build capacities, improve workplace culture, and enhance our professional and personal development.

“I have benefitted tremendously and learned a lot from my mentors in UNICEF,” said Veronika Vashchenko, our Deputy Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina. “Sharing their experience and wisdom so generously with me, they helped to increase my confidence and problem-solving abilities. That’s why I am always so happy to be a mentor for younger colleagues. As a mentor, I get new perspectives and feel satisfaction from witnessing the success of colleagues with my contribution.”

Adding, “I hope UNICEF will invest more in scaling up our structured mentorship programme REACH, so more colleagues – both mentors and mentees – could benefit from it!” 

Brigita Hadžić Operations Manager in our Operations Section, also shared her experience as a mentor over the course of her career, including with her most recent mentee, Alija Gušić. 

 

“When I joined UNICEF a long time ago, unfortunately, I did not have good mentors, on the contrary, colleagues that were supposed to provide mentoring were almost hostile and not willing to share more than the minimum,” said Brigita. “I promised myself that I would correct this injustice by providing proper mentoring to all colleagues that needed mentoring, once I qualify experience (and age) wise. Mentoring is a personal development relationship, and it is not only about knowledge related to technical skills required for a job, it is also about organizational culture, working with people, working in a different environment and challenging situations. I hope that I am making it easier for my mentee to grasp all of these without being stressed because there is no help.”

Adding, “I see great potential in my new mentee, Alija, and I am very motivated to continue mentoring him – I also see concrete examples of things that he can teach me, and I will not hesitate to ask.”

Our colleague Renata Radeka has the pleasure of mentoring two UNVs Ena Duranovic and Aljoša Kostić, working on the COVID-19 Response in Education Project “Reimagine Education”. 

“Honest and positive relationship with my mentor had an exclusively positive impact on both my professional and personal development,” says Ena. “As a project coordinator, Renata allowed me to be actively involved in all segments of project implementation giving me the autonomy in executing and coordinating important project tasks. She used every opportunity to cherish my achievements, which gave me additional motivation for work. Looking back to the start of my assignment in June 2021, I notice a significant shift in both my professional and personal life. I recognize Renata’s support as one of the crucial factors in that process.”

Aljoša added his thoughts.

“Focusing on strengthening UNICEF’s values and developing a sense of purpose and responsibility, Renata managed to motivate me and give a direct contribution to my productivity. She understood that I needed time to reach my full potential. Being a newcomer that was exactly what I needed. The period of working with Renata is one of the most significant in my professional career. It was Renata who, with her mentorship, contributed to a great extent to the way I feel today.”

Renata also touched upon what the mentoring process meant to her.

“I felt proud, fulfilled and grateful at the same time, both during the implementation when I observed a successful task completed but also, I had this long-term feeling of happiness for their (and subsequently mine) personal growth and gratitude for the steep learning curve that they could achieve. None of this would have been possible without a strong sense of respect for their intelligence, ambition, and their set of goals that I had a full understanding of, taking time to support them by listening, encouraging and ultimately celebrating every success of theirs.”

​​​​​​​Our office in Bosnia and Herzegovina is thrilled to be able to share such positive experiences and accounts stemming from the mentor-mentee relationships in our office and wish that our stories will inspire other offices to build their mentorship programmes and relationships. Whilst official structured mentorship programmes within UNICEF do exist, we have witnessed that additional informal mentorship can have positive outcomes for all parties associated, especially for Young UNICEF colleagues.