The world isn’t always the easiest place to be a girl: our brains are often hardwired to see each other as competition, instead of seeing each other as a cheerleader. The Shona Project (TSP) believes in the power of girls supporting girls, and particularly established women supporting the younger generation. 

Mentorship plays a huge part in every aspect of TSP. You don’t think we got to where we are today by just winging it? Nope, our whole team is mentored by an army of experienced people, who support and guide us on the things that we don’t know, because newsflash… we don’t know everything, and we never will. 

The tricky thing that we have come to notice is that our young women struggle to identify positive role models, and find the opportunity to access and build a relationship with someone who they can call a mentor. Recognising that more support is needed, we at The Shona Project are delighted to have launched the first year pilot of our National Mentorship Programme.

This programme is designed for senior cycle secondary school girls who are seeking positive role models and career inspiration, and to benefit women in the workforce who wish to develop their mentoring skills and to share their knowledge with the next generation. 

During the 9 month programme, girls will be paired up with women who work with our amazing corporate partners. Our mentees will meet monthly online with their mentors, giving them the chance to receive focused support and build trusting relationships with inspirational working women. On top of this, our girls will take part in three tailored Shona workshops facilitated by the fab Shona team!

By the end of the programme, we hope to have given the girls:

• Increased understanding of career options, journeys, and experiences of women in the workplace;
• Increased career aspirations and an expanded network of career support;
• Increased confidence to find and implement solutions;

• Increased resilience to stress, challenges, and negativity;
• Increased confidence to find and implement solutions;
• Increased agency to create change, embrace opportunities and achieve full potential;
• Increased feelings of self-worth. 

Since this year is a pilot, we have a big focus on monitoring and evaluation: nobody is perfect, and we don’t expect our pilot programme to be either! We will be working hard behind the scenes to make sure we’re constantly improving where we can!

None of this work would be possible without the time and support generously given by our corporate founding partners. We are extremely grateful to Allianz, McCann Fitzgerald, CBRE, Fitzgerald Power, Salesforce, VHI, and &Smyth Communications for helping us to launch this Mentorship Programme. 

We’d like to say an extra special thank you to the three incredible women who funded the development of the programme: Eva Pau, Oonagh O’Hagan, and Lucy Gaffney. It is thanks to everyone involved that we get to continue on our mission to educate, empower, and inspire the next generation of girls in Ireland to become strong, confident and curious young women!

To learn more about who your school or your organisation can get involved for the academic year 2025/26, reach out to our team! 

For schools: if you would like to express and interest in joining our programme for the 2025/26 academic year, you can do so here. 

For corporate partners: Alice ([email protected]) has you covered.