Top left: Mentor Roslyn Sackley and Project Officer Claire Manning on Zoom call.
Top Right: Mentor Peter Granleese on Mentor telephone call.
Bottom Left: Lindy Hou giving a Mentor Presentation
Bottom Right Side: Robert Altamore conducting in person Mentoring session.
Over the past three months, Canberra Blind Society has piloted our Mentoring Program and as hoped our small team of Mentors who are blind or vision impaired have had thoughtful discussions and built ongoing productive relationships.
We have almost reached our main goal of working with 10 x Public Sector Organisation – 5 x Federal and 5 x ACT Government. We have conducted Mentoring Sessions with 8 Mentees who have identified as having a vision impairment (VIPs). We have also run sessions with 16 Mentees who are from Diversity & Inclusion, Human Resource, People and IT Teams as well as Team Leaders.
Our team has really enjoyed connecting with a wide range of professionals in different areas of both the APS and Territory Services. We have found out more about the work you all do and explored ideas and experiences around our themes of accessibility, inclusion and empowerment. Feedback has been positive.
“It’s given me empowerment to go no, hang on, let’s try and do this, let’s try and do that. If it doesn’t work, whatever. We’ve tried it. Why not try something if you don’t know if it’s going to work or not. And that’s the way I look at things now.”
VIP Mentee, Canberra Blind Society Mentoring Program, May 2022
The discussions between Mentors and Mentees with different vision impairments have assisted our project by providing us with important insights into what is working well, what could be done differently and what are the ongoing challenges. We plan to turn information shared into practical resources during Stage 2 of this pilot. We know that different people have different needs when requesting support and we would therefore like to extend an extra invitation to anyone who is blind or has a vision impairment who might now have availability and interest to be part of our program.
We would like to capture a few more VIP voices. All information is confidential. If anyone would like to find out more details, you can contact us directly. Reach out to our Project Officer - Claire Manning at Canberra Blind Society by email – project@canberrablindsociety.org.au or mobile 0411 436 092.
Canberra Blind Society would like to say thank you to everyone who has supported our program and we look forward to strengthening these important collaborations as the project continues.