Mentorloop’s Co-founder & COO Heidi Holmes speaks with Merredith Murphy & Mary Grech of Fitted For Work on our podcast, The Right Connection.
Introductions
[Heidi Holmes]
Hello everyone, my name is Heidi Holmes and I am the co-founder of Mentorloop. And welcome to our podcase series, The Right Connection, where we dicuss all thing mentoring-related. Today, I’m delighted to be interviewing Merredith Murphy and Mary Grech, two of our long-standing customers from Fitted for Work, which is a not-for-profit organisation committed to helping disadvantaged and underrepresented women in the community in which a mentoring program plays a key role. So Merredith and Mary, welcome today to The Right Connection!
[Mary Grech]
Thanks, Heidi!
[Merredith Murphy]
Thanks, great to be here!
[Heidi]
So, we’ll jump straight into it. Where I wanted to start today was just acknowledging your long-standing commitment to Fitted For Work. So, I understand both of you have been at the organisation for over 11 years now. Merredith as the Fitted For Work Volunteer Manager, and Mary as a long-time volunteer. And so thinking about this length of service, it tells me two things: you must love the work you do, but you also must really feel like you’re making an impact. And I think if we reflect on the last couple of years, you know, that term around “The Great Resignation”, I think it’d be nice to stop and reflect with both of you on just your loyalty and dedication to Fitted for Work. And so, Merredith, I know a lot of people, as I said, after the last two years in particular, are seeking more purpose in their work, what’s kept you at Fitted For Work all these years?
[Merredith]
Yeah, look, it’s a really interesting question. I think you mentioned “dedicated” to Fitted For Work and I think that makes it sound really noble. I don’t think it’s quite that. But I think what I’ve always loved about the organisation is it is an organisation that is here to help people and that’s always been my driver. Like, I’ve always been in work that can hopefully make a difference for people and that’s what I really love about Fitted For Work. And in fact, we just a new staff member sign up this week and joined a staff meeting and she said, “I can’t believe how happy everybody is, it seems to be such a lovely workplace!” and I think that is a lot about what’s kept me at Fitted For Work. It’s a good place to be. It’s a good place to work because we look after each other, but it’s also that we’re doing good things and we are helping people and that’s definitely what’s kept me at Fitted For Work all this time.
[Heidi]
Amazing. And Mary, I actually believe you started before Merredith. What’s driven you to dedicate a large part of your life to Fitted For Work as well?
[Mary]
Well, my background is in rehabilitation, so helping ill and injured people return to work. And also I did some further study, went into career development so I was seeing adult clients who wanted to change their careers, look for work, etc. and I actually… I’m not quite sure how I got this but I got, like, this little postcard around Fitted For Work. Someone sent it to me and said this would be a good organisation to perhaps tap into and I had it on the mantle in my office. And then as I sort of was morphing into working paid work less and just was looking for somewhere to devote some time to on an unpaid basis. I was really looking for an organisation where I could use my skills and experience and help women but in a very direct way. And just liek Merredith said, it’s a great organisation. I love being a part of that organisation. It’s very much volunteer-driven, sp that’s quite unique about it and you’ll find that most volunteers exactly feel the same way about contributing to the lives of others in a really direct, real way.
[Heidi]
Love it. Well, you know, that kinda leads into my next question. We should probably talk about what does Fitted For Work actually do? And I guess, how are you uniquely different out in the market with some other community service providers? Feel free, either one of you, to jump in.
[Merredith]
I’m happy to jump in. I guess the first thing to say is to describe what we do through our mission statement, which is really, we exist to support women experiencing disadvantage to get work, keep work, and navigate their world of work. And we work across the transgender and gender diverse community as well, so open to anybody that identifies as a woman that wants support in their job seeking. So, I think we do it in a way that is quite inclusive and wrap-around.
So we have services that support people in the really early stages of job seeking. So they might have experienced long-term unemployment and not just really know what they even want to do or where to start looking for a job or what job might be good for them. So we can direct them to… Well actually that’s where mentoring is a really good starting point for those people. But we can, through our Job Hub, we can talk to women about how to put a resume together, how to prepare for an interview, like, we do all those really, really job-focused things.
We’ve got an Emerge Program which has morphed over time, and that was another of the programs that Mary has helped set up way back in the beginning, but that program is something that gives women conficence. It helps them start to answer those questions about what they might be good at, what their skills are, what their experiences in life have led them to that they can take into employment. So the Emerge Program is really good for helping women start to know themselves better and where they’re at in terms of readiness for work.
We’ve got the outfitting service. Most people have heard of Fitted For Work because of something to do with clothing. And that’s a fantastic part of our service, obviously, because it gives women the physical things they need to feel confident. You know, we all know that you can have a bad hair day and, you know, just feel… Or you can put on an outfit that you feel, “Oh, I feel pretty good in this!” and it gives you that confidence. So we all understand the importance of that and we’ve been able to do that online now, we can service women anywhere across the country. And COVID has certainly helped to push us into that space, but we were already doing that before.
But all of those things, I think, are part of what we offer women in terms of what they can do to prepare for work. But I think one of the things that makes us unique is that we see that experiencing disadvantage in a way that is -it can happen to anyone at any time in their life. So you don’t have to be a Centrelink recipient on a healthcare card to access FItted For Work. You just need to be a women who wants some help and is willing to put your hand up and say, “I hink I need someone to help me through this.” And I think that is part of what makes us unique – that we see that experiencing disadvantage can be, and is for some women, a lifetime, for other women it’s just a pocket in time experience and we can jump in there to support them in whatever that need might be.
Mentoring at Fitted For Work
[Heidi]
I think that’s a fabulous distinction as well because I think we’ve potentially heard more of these stories and becoming more aware, particularly after COVID, that there’s just a series of circumstances that can lead to someone now experiencing disadvantage. And it can be highly educated people that have had work for a long time but then all of a sudden, a series of events have led to now maybe needing a little bit of support and help. And I love that… also Merredith, this leads into my next piece around, I guess leading into the mentoring question and the purpose of the mentoring program, but you mentioned that component, that confidence-building part around asking questions of your community and asking them and giving them a chance to voice, you know, what’s their experience, what do they like, what do they have ambitions for… That piece leads into this key aspect of mentoring, you know, that active listening part, but I think just that sentiment there shows that Fitted For Work is an organisation that is there to listen as well and it’s not about telling. That’s really great to hear as well.
So leading into that piece around the mentoring component that you did touch on, maybe early on for some of these women that maybe have been experiencing disadvantage for a longer period of time and using mentoring as a way to support and build confidence, how long has the program been running for now and what was the impetus to implement this mentor program?
[Mary]
Do you want me to take this one, Merredith?
[Merredith]
Yeah, please do, Mary!
[Mary]
So, way back, Heidi, we – myself and another person – were involved in developing a pre-employment program. So it was called “Transition To Work” back then and now it’s morphed into lots of different names, and changed, etc. And so that was all about communication skills, obviously the practical stuff about where to look for work, but how to negotiate, manage conflict, all that great stuff, and so we developed that programm, but part of that program we felt essential for for the woman to be offered a mentor. BEcause we felt that mentoring is really the tool to help with sustainable employment. So if you have someone, you know, in your back pocket who’s there to support you through any of the continuum of job search and through to getting a job and sustaining a job, it would have to be a mentor. So we made that part of the program, that women were offered a mentor, and we talk about the benefits of mentoring, etc. So that’s really where that came from. So that’s been 11 years ago that that started. And the very first program, we offered mentors to women, so some women have been involved since that time because we felt that it was an essential component.
Mentoring Program Management Before Mentorloop
[Heidi]
Amazing! So, you’ve been one of our customers now for a number of years. But tell me, you know, I’m curious – what did your program look like before you started engaging with Mentorloop? Challenges and, I guess, running the program, the admin stuff…
[Mary]
Lots and lots of bits of paper.
[Laughter]
[Mary]
Bits of paper on kitchen tables, board rooms… Donated board rooms, kitchen tables… [laughter] That’s a visual for you.
[Heidi]
Yeah, a lot of manual, sort of, paperwork?
[Merredith]
Totally, totally. I think, if I can chip in here, one of the things that has changed is the growth, obviously, and that’s where, like, Mentorloop has been amazing to help us manage the growth of the program. What Mary just described about our early days, when we developed the Transition to Work program with mentoring as a parallel to that program – we were putting women through the Transition to Work program, building their confidence, getting them ready for work, and then handing them on to a mentor. We were, at the same time, developing out mentor training, or had developed it, then we’re bringing mentors in through the training, we’re getting to know them. So, in the very early days, it was this really lovely, little very cozy little group of people because we all knew everybody. Mary and I, working on the program, knew who the mentors were, and we knew the participants because we were both involved in the training of both. We’re both doing the training with the women in the Transition to Work program and the mentors. As it’s grown, of course, and over time, that’s just not possible to keep involved with both groups. A Mary said, over the years, we’ve had so many rooms we’ve taken over – cafes and all sorts of places – with bits of paper that, “these are the mentors, these are the mentees” and they’ve all filled out their forms…
[Mary]
“She’s in education!”
“Oh, she wants to get into education!”
“Hang on, where was that person we looked at before?”
[Laughter]
[Merredith]
“But no, she lives in the wrong side of town!”
[Mary]
“Oh, but she can’t see her during business hours!”
[Laughter]
[Heidi]
I love this roleplay, it’s really bringing the pain to life!
[Mary]
It was painful, it was painful.
[Merredith]
It was a really massive job and a really big messy job.
[Heidi]
And I think that’s important to, like… people… we know from our experience in working with people that just run mentor programs… I mean, I think people underestimate how much work is actually involved in a mentor program. Nobody disputes the fact that mentoring is valuable or worthwhile, but it always gets tacked onto somebody else’s job. So you’ve already got these roles and responsibilites and then, you know, somebody has a great idea to start a mentor program and it’s like, “Oh, you guys can do that,” but they really don’t know. If you’ve never run a program, you actually don’t know about some of those logistics and the admin burden in getting started.
[Merredith]
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
And it’s also… Once you’ve matched people, you still need to be able to support those relationships. So, there is a lot that sits behind and underneath and all around it. Look, before Mentorloop it was, particularly as it grew, it was becoming harder and harder to keep a real sense of knowing everybody, and that we were doing a good job, and absolutely that’s where Mentorloop has made it so much easier. It’s take away a lot of that admin burden.
[Heidi]
And in addition, I guess, to that admin burden, I guess there’s now, the program, as you say, has grown and scaled and you now have, you know, Mentorloop and the software there to support you with that. I’m interested, what do you have visibility now of that you didn’t have before, or what has it enabled you, by maybe reducing some of the admin burden, to focus on in terms of the mentor program?
Better Mentoring Program Management with Mentorloop
[Merredith]
Yeah. So, look, undoubtedly, not needing to rely on those spreadsheets so much and all that sort of stuff, like, it’s certainly gives a lot more time to focus on the relationships and keeping track of how they’re going.
And that’s one of the things that I love about Mentorloop. That I can just pop in and, just, it allows me to see whether individual pairs are interacting and how frequently. And that’s amazing because we know from experience that we can make a match – the mentor has signed up and the mentee has put her hand up – what we don’t always know, and particularly now because Mary and I are less involved with the… like, we don’t know as well, if at all, some of the women that are coming onto the mentor program. So we make the match on Mentorloop but we’re not always sure at what point that woman is at and whether she’s actually really ready for a mentor. So she gets matched but then she might kind of be, “Oh, I don’t really know what to do with this now” and might not respond to the mentor straight away or something else has gone on for her and she just hasn’t had a chance. At least Mentorloop allows us to be able to see that quite quickly. We would rely 100% before on the mentor coming back saying “I haven’t heard from this person” and then sometimes the mentors would be like “Oh, is that because I haven’t done my job well enough?” and they might be thinking, “Oh, just give it another week” and before you know it, it’s been, you know, two months and nothing’s happened. So that’s, this is now one of the great things that allows us to focus much earlier, intervene earlier, try to get it on track and support. So that’s one of the things I love that I can have more time to do.
And I think the other thing I was gonna say, obviously since COVID everything is online. And as you’re aware, Heidi, we were involved with Mentorloop before COVID but that gave us a really great head start into bringing all the mentors on and making sure that everyone was really aware that this is the way to go. And that’s been amazing because we can match people up anywhere now, geography is not an issue at all.
[Heidi]
Yeah, that amazing. I mean, we’ve seen that too. Because there was still fight – fighting this, I guess, perception that mentoring had to be done face-to-face, in person. You know, and that’s not just that, you know, at not-for-profit community levels. This was corporate programs, government, a wide spectrum. There was still this, yeah, as I said, perception that you did need to meet with your mentee or mentor face-to-face. I think COVID has definitely opened up the door to a new way of thinking of obviously we don’t need to be having a coffee meeting for this mentoring relationship. And now what that has done is it actually, it widens the spectrum of who you could potentially match someone with and I think when we take off, take away some of those blockers, what we open ourselves up (to) is the ability to create better matches if we’re removing location as kind of a barrier. So that’s amazing to hear that playing out in reality for your program.
Expanding Access to Mentoring
[Merredith]
I was also gonna add, if I may, that in relation to what else we’ve been able to do because we’ve got less admin stuff now that we are online with Mentorloop. We’ve been able to expand the mentor program out and we’ve got a couple of different arms, if you like, of the mentor program. So, we’ve been working on a model – Fitted For Work has She Works which is a social enterprise arm of the organisation that links women to employers. So it’s like a recruitment arm of the organisation.
[Heidi]
Oh, amazing.
[Merredith]
Yeah, as a social enterprise, which I forgot to mention earlier. And so with that, we’re taking our work-ready women, if you like, or inviting work-ready women that come to our service to apply for roles that our She Works team have been securing through employers that wanna work with us. They want more women, they’re prepared to give our women an opportunity. So we’ve developed what we call the SWIM Program, which is the She Works Interim Mentoring Program. And that’s just more of a targeted, short-term, the woman’s in that recruitment phase, we want to give them a mentor for just for that 6-week or so. Just to – bang – check-in call every week at jkey spots in that recruitment process. So we’ve been sort of develop that up a little bit, or a lot.
We also have now expanded our… and we are running a Mentoring in Prison Program. So, Fitted For Work has, for a number of years, consistently developed and been working in the prisons – both women’s prisons here in Victoria – running our Transition to Work program, and we still call it that. It’s helping women prepare for employment, think about employment for when they get out. We’ve been doing that for a number of years. I can talk a lot about that just in itself as a program. But just in the last almost 2 years now… No, 12 months, I beg your pardon, we’ve been doing mentoring with women in prison. And so we’ve been providing women a few months out from release with a mentor and then the intention is that they start planning and working together around employment and then the mentee will contact the mentor when they’re out and they continue that relationship to help in employment.
[Heidi]
Ah, that’s amazing!
[Merredith]
Yeah, and it’s been great having the time to develop that and so far, so good.
Memorable Mentoring Stories
[Heidi]
Yeah, and look, I think that that’s an amazing, sort of, evolution that just shows the maturity of the organisation and I guess, this vision you’ve had for mentoring and that it doesn’t have to just be this one way that it plays out. You know, the traditional one-to-one, you’re in a relationship for 12 months and this is, we’re meeting once a month. You know, I think what you’ve demonstrated there is the maturity of your organisation, how you think about mentoring and we’re very much seeing much more of this dynamic, sort of, flash mentoring play out and, you know, sometimes that’s all you need. It’s just about getting from A to B and that just might be this 6-week period that you spoke about. And, you know, I think having those expectations around the time and the commitment really enables actually potentially more people to participate in mentoring as well. It doesn’t have to be this life-long commitment that you’re signing up for. So that’s amazing to hear about all those different initiatives.
So, I guess thinking, moving on from, I guess, running the programs, I’d love to ask both of you if you’re able to share, I guess, a memorable moment for you personally from the mentor program. You know, maybe it’s sharing a story around a notable mentoring relationship where you really felt like the experience did change a life or course-correct for someone. You know, a mentee or a mentor, does a story come to mind for you, Mary, in particular?
[Mary]
Oh, there are so many, Heidi. There are so many stories but there are two that I think of, that I think might demonstrate, sort of, the extremes of the women that Fitted For Work help and mentoring has helped.
So one comes to mind, very early on in the, when we were offering the mentoring, we set up a mentoring with a mentee who was quite young. I think she was about 17 years old. Had a lot of health issues, had a lot of anxiety about leaving her home. You know, really difficult. Although, you know… And her mother dropped her off at the course that we were running and she didn’t attend the course every time it was on but she came to majority, so good on her. And we said to her, “Please come. Even if you don’t make it one week, you know, please come the next week. It’s all good,” and she did do that when she could. We matched her up with a brilliant mentor. And initially she had said to the mentor, “Can you come to my home?” and the mentor said “No, that’s not something that we can do. Let’s have a think about where we could meet that you would feel comfortable with.” Like, the mentor was just gold. And they ended up meeting at a cafe at the end of her street. So, you know, just all these baby steps in trying to help this person stretch a bit but still fel comfortable, build that rapport, build that trust. As I said, the mentor was brilliant in understanding that and not pushing her too dar. But there’s lots of things that happened, but I guess the most momentous thing is that she got that person on public transport. And I know that probably doesn’t sound big, but it was big in that…
[Heidi]
Yes, absolutely.
[Mary]
If you’re thinking about your journey and your path to employment, it’s gonna be very difficult if you can’t even, you know, go outside of your neighbouring area or go on public transport, etc. So it was a real… it was a big milestone in that mentoring relationship to have that person just take public transport, you know.
That’s one, sort of, end of the continuum. So when we’re looking at people who are looking for work, we have people who are pre-pre-employment.
And the other exmple that comes to mind is someone that was matched with another brilliant mentor. There’s a theme: all our mentors are pretty brilliant.
[Laugh]
With that person, they were very much job-ready and they actually got a job very quickly after they met. That was already in the pipeline. The thing with that mentoring relationship is that what that was about was supporting that mentee to maintain, to sustain employment. About 6 weeks… it was about 6 weeks that the mentee had been working. loving it, loving it, it was great. She contacts, she texts the mentor to say “I’ve been asked to do a performance review tomorrow. I have no idea what that is.” Completely beside herself, have never heard of the term, didn’t know what she was supposed to do.
[Heidi]
Oh yeah, they’re hard at the best of times.
[Mary]
Oh, exactly, exactly. That’s right. But she had no idea about that, you know, that everyone feels very similar. Anyway, the mentor said, “Look, I can speak to you later on, you know, like 5:30,” something like that, “Send me the paperwork and we’ll have a conversation about it.” So they did, they talked about how she might prepare, they talked about what it was, how she would prepare, etc. Now the mentee turned to the mentor and said, “You know, I was ready to not go in tomorrow and just leave that job” because she was ashamed, she was embarrassed, and she just felt that she should know what that was. And so how’s the employer gonna look at me if I don’t even know that? And that mentor just talked her down, talked her through it.
So had that mentor not been involved, that person would be back looking for work and have had an employment history of just 6 weeks in a job which is, as we all know, is not a good look. So, you know, it was wonderful. And I believe that they’re still in touch. It’s a very sort of, casual, informal, sort of touching base type thing. And that person has gone onto work in other organisations. So, that was just to give you an idea of the types of mentoring.
[Heidi]
I think they’re both amazing stories and, I guess, great examples of, you know, the extent… That’s the thing, mentoring does not have this script book where it has to be this certain pathway that it plays out. And I love hearing the follow-up of, you know, they still keep in touch because we talk about, you know, building this advisory board, and it’s kind of, you can almost think about it as, you may not stay this formal relationship but you connect, you collect these mentoring relationships as you go. And, you know, obviously the intent is hopefully you can maybe, you know, tap into this maybe in 2 years’ time or 12 months’ time when you’re feeling that you need it again. You know, this moment that you need that. So I think they’re great examples/
Merredith, is there something for you that stands out or something you’d like to share?
[Merredith]
Look, again, there’s so many. There are so many.
Just on that last point though that you mentioned around it’s… you develop a good relationship, mentoring relationship and it might be something that stays with you for a very long time but you might not be in that formal relationship. Just really recently, one of our mentors who’s been around for a while, continues to be involved, taking on new mentees, contacted me recently to say that… I think it was actually the first mentee this person ever had… and did a great job in helping this mentee find work, find a good job. The mentee, I think, just required some help in finding work in Australia. Like, was well-qualified, but just there was a few language barriers and things. Anyway, but at the same time, parallel to all of that this mentee was experiencing some issues at home and the relationship was a bit stop-start with her partner and there was a period of separation – there was all this sort of stuff. The mentor got her through all of this and they sort of intermittently kept in touch. This would be going back probably 6 years ago. Just this week, the mentor reached out to me to say this mentee is going through divorce proceedings and needs some assistance around just understanding family law options – can Fitted For Work help, you know? What that demonstrates to me is that women knew who to go to as someone that might be able to help her with this moment. Like, employment is fine, she’s still working, all if that. But it’s just that at the moment she just needed that little bit of help. And for me, it was like, “Oh, that’s a long lasting connection” so you know, that’s one.
And look, just really quickly, I can think of examples where we’ve had mentors help women who have been really down and out. Like I can think of one example where one of our women was on parole and went back to prison but the mentor supported her. And the role modelling and the dedication of that mentor to help that women – absolutely amazing. Transformative for the mentee and really life changing, in some ways, for the mentor who opened her world to a whole other world.
[Heidi]
Well, yeah, I think that’s actually a question I wanted to jump to. I guess, you know, like, your mentors as well, we’re kinda talking about the mentees here but yeah, I guess on the mentor’s side, for that person in particular, Merredith, what was some of the learning for them in that experiences?
[Merredith]
Oh, immense.
[Mary]
They learnt a lot about the justice system.
[Laughter]
[Mary]
Didn’t they? Which they’ve never had a part of. They learned about the meaning of strip search and non-strip search visits. So that was another component.
[Heidi]
Yeah, these are all things that could potentially be very valuable in the future that they know a little bit about.
[Merredith]
But I think, you know, one of the, like, there is so much about that particular story… You know, just the reasons that… You know, life circumstances mean someone makes this choice and then that’s the follow-on. I think that was really eye-opening for the mentor to understand just the fragility of that. Some people’s particular situations can change in a moment. Whereas those of us that have a little more security and stability in our lives don’t experience that. So I think the mentor learned a lot in that way.
And I think the other thing, and Mary you might have a comment about this too, but I think the other thing that mentor learned was that again when you live a life of relative stability and security, you take a lot of things for granted about what you got in your own upbringing so you just naturally pass that on in your interactions with other people. And this young woman was just blown away by, the mentee, by, I think, the role modelling she got from this woman, who would have been, like I’m guessing it would have been a mother-daughter age difference? And I think it was easy for the young woman to kind of see this older, mature woman, and think, “Oh, wow, that’s how people interact. Oh, that’s what a positive relationship is. Oh, we disagree about something but it’s not…” You know…
[Heidi]
It’s not a big deal, it’s not escalating into something.
[Mary]
The role modelling that the mentors give is…
[Merredith]
Massive.
[Mary]
Key. Massive. The other thing is about being non-judgmental, Heidi, as well. We do a lot of that, talking about unconscious bias, bias confirmation with the mentors, and about suspending their judgment abd just being present for the mentee and that example was very much about… I don’t think they ever knew what that person was in for because it’s irrelevant. And just like, you know, the mentees in our mainstream program, you know, and the prison program, you don’t necessarily need to know people’s life story. You’re just sitting there assisting them from this point on with no judgment as to what’s happened in the past and being mindful of the choices that they might be making during that relationship as well. So I think non-judgmental, being non-judgmental is also key. And we do find that, you know, when we do the mentor training, we do have people that drop off because it’s not exactly what they thought it would be. And that’s fine because don’t want them to sign up for something that they don’t feel that they can be a part of. Because the Fitted For Work mentoring program may be and likely to be different to their corporate program or other sort of setting that they may have mentored.
What’s Next for Mentoring at Fitted for Work
[Heidi]
Yeah, and I think you’ve highlighted some key skills there that are important. You know, like in your own personal development as a mentor, you know, it’s not just about paying it back, you know, just there to put it in your resume. There’s some amazing life skills that, you know, through those examples you’ve just shared that, you know, there’s huge value for a mentor here as well in that experience. You know, empathy, that active listening, you know, that takes some skill and practice and awareness to be able to have that self-control to do that. Amazing.
Well, look, thank you so much for sharing about, you know, the amazing work you do at Fitted For Work and some of those stories. I just wanted to wrap with one final question. You’re already doing a lot, obviously, in the mentoring space. But, you know, I just, is there, what’s next? What’s next for you in terms of, you know, these initiatives going forward? Is there, or is there a program that you’re looking to set up in 2022? What’s the vision going forward for Fitted For Work and all your mentoring initiatives?
[Merredith]
Yeah, look, I think the big vision for 2022 is just getting all of our services, you know, back to whatever the new normal is. So, you know, mentoring doesn’t need to be on-site, it’s not that. But, like, we have, as an organisation, we’ve had 2 years almost in a new building and we haven’t had the whole team in together working. So that’s a big priority for the organisation – just settle into our new space. That’s a whole other story/ But the mentor program, the big vision is just to see it continue to expand. We are national, we can be a provider of mentoring for women anywhere across the country and we’re really keen to see that expand. So that’s the big vision, I suppose, to see that to start to really take off into next year.
[Heidi]
Fantastic! Amazing! Well, look, thank you Merredith, thank you Mary, so much for taking the time to have a chat with me today on The Right Connection. It’s been fabulous talking to you both. We’ll wrap it up there but thanks so much!
[Merredith]
Thank you!
[Mary]
Thanks, Heidi!
For more life-changing mentoring stories from around the world, check out our Podcast “The Right Connection” – it’s available everywhere you get your podcasts!
