Senior educator with adult students in community college or community centre

Mentoring Programs

Mentoring is a system of semi-structured guidance whereby one person shares their knowledge, skills, and experience to assist others to progress in their own {professional} lives and careers. Mentors need to be readily accessible and prepared to offer help as the need arises – within agreed bounds. Mentors very often have their own mentors, and in turn, their mentees might wish to ‘put something back’ and become mentors themselves – it’s a chain for ‘passing on’ good practice so that the benefits can be widely spread. Mentoring can be a short-term arrangement until the original reason for the partnership is fulfilled (or ceases), or it can last many years. 

Mentoring is more than ‘giving advice’, or passing on what your experience was in a particular area or situation. It’s about motivating and empowering the other person to identify their own issues and goals, and helping them to find ways of resolving or reaching them – not by doing it for them, or expecting them to ‘do it the way I did it’, but by understanding and respecting different ways of working.” 
University of Cambridge

OFEC One to One Mentoring Program

Group Mentoring in CPD

OFEC One to One Mentoring Program

The primary goal of the Ophthalmology Foundation Education Consortium (OFEC) One to One Mentoring Program is to connect ophthalmologists with each other for mentoring in a variety of topics. Mentors will aim to help mentees avoid having to learn from their own mistakes, sharing their experience to accelerate the career of their mentees. Mentors aid mentees in developing skills in their areas of interest regarding eye care, education, research, and organizational leadership. The OFEC One to One Mentoring Program will encourage participants to build a team relationship from which both can benefit.

Working with a mentor can be an invaluable experience for both parties. The mentor and mentee will likely learn new things about themselves and each other that will serve to move them towards their career goals. To make a successful mentor–mentee relationship, each party needs to understand the role they play in the mentoring team. For both mentors and mentees this process is a two-way street, and you get out of it what you put in.

We thank Santen Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. for their generous support of this program.

Group Mentoring Program in Continuing Professional Development (CPD)

The Ophthalmology Foundation Education Consortium (OFEC) Group Mentoring Program’s primary goal is to connect individuals and professional organizations interested in creating, enhancing and implementing CPD projects with experienced mentors who have demonstrated success in leading CPD initiatives.

Mentors and mentees will co-work online and/or face to face on any of the following components of a CPD project:

  1. Leading CPD–project design and management 
  2. Bridging identified gaps–resources to translate the project  into practice
  3. Implementation and following up–quality improvement 
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