Closing Zimbabwe’s Conservation Gender Gap, One Mentoring Pair at a Time
with Joan Banda
Wildlife Conservation Action
with Joan Banda
Wildlife Conservation Action
How Wildlife Conservation Action used Mentorloop to bring structure, consistency, and measurable momentum to the Conservation Sisters Pathfinder Mentorship Program.
Across Zimbabwe’s conservation sector, women remain deeply underrepresented — a reality Wildlife Conservation Action (WCA) knew all too well. “Anytime you get to connect with another female… it’s just like 5 of you amongst hundreds of gentlemen,” says Joan Banda, Research and Conservation Leadership Programs Officer at WCA. Those conversations kept circling back to the same idea: a mentoring program. For WCA’s Executive Director, it became personal. As Banda recalls, she once wrote to the team: “I’m failing to sleep because this project… hasn’t kicked off. I need you guys to make it happen… because it’s my legacy.” An important mission indeed.
That urgency became the Conservation Sisters Pathfinder Mentorship Program, pairing final-year conservation students with industry experts to help them navigate the uncertainty of entering the field. Before Mentorloop, WCA had no consistent way to measure something as human as a mentoring relationship across dozens of pairs.
Banda explains:
With Mentorloop, that changed. Banda now tracks all 93 participants through a single dashboard — who’s paired, how often pairs are connecting, and how each relationship is progressing from “getting to know each other” through to “mentoring champions.” Goal-setting became sharper and more structured, engagement became visible, and — in Banda’s words:
The impact shows up in small, telling moments: mentees building LinkedIn profiles and stepping into a more visible, employable position in their field. A growing confidence in the way mentees speak at events and write online — a shift Banda has watched even among WCA’s younger mentors as they grow into the role of mentoring others. And a milestone the whole team celebrated: passing 100 Kudos given across the platform’s trust and networking categories, a signal that participants were genuinely feeling the difference in their own lives.
Looking ahead, WCA plans to graduate its first cohort in early next year, with many mentees returning as mentors for the next intake — and to expand the programme’s geographic and mentor diversity by tapping into international networks beyond Zimbabwe.
Wildlife Conservation Action
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"The intentional pairing of our program has largely supported our participants to improve their confidence level and significantly enhance the quality and the size of their network and their confidence in their place in the conservation space in Zimbabwe.”
– with Joan Banda, Wildlife Conservation Action
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The right mentoring program should level the playing field to empower entire cohorts of people: workplaces, member associations, social groups and educational institutions. Equality should be a cherished value so that every individual can thrive—whoever they are, whatever their background, however they worship or whomever they love. But we can’t arrive at equality without it’s often forgotten partner, equity.
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Being a Mentoring Program Coordinator is an incredibly rewarding experience that positively impacts the lives of many. And while mentoring programs don’t fully run themselves (even though Mentorloop can do a great deal of the heavy lifting!), they do require a point of contact that can steer the program in the right direction for the organisation that is running one.
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This is Part 8 of our 10-part series on the 10 Key Qualities and Habits of a Highly Effective Mentor.
In this post, we’ll look at how mentors can successfully build quality feedback into their mentoring. Quality feedback is priceless because it clarifies expectations, helps people learn from their mistakes, and builds confidence. It also allows mentees to more effectively take what their mentors say and turn it into action.
