Developing a culturally relevant eMentoring program for aboriginal youth

Abstract

High school graduation is a critical stepping stone to entering post-secondary education and the workforce and is associated with better overall health outcomes. However, a gap of approximately 30 percentage points in graduation rates between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students remains. Aboriginal youth are underrepresented in post-secondary education and overrepresented in unemployment rates, particularly in health-care fields. The eMentoring project was developed to address this issue by connecting 100 mentees from grades 7-12 (ages 11-18) to 50 mentors who are Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal post-secondary health science students. A province-wide initiative, eMentoring has taken the definition of mentoring (a developmental partnership through which one person shares knowledge, skills, information, and perspective to foster the growth of someone else) to an online format, with the aim of supporting youth as they transition through school and consider entering a post-secondary health science program (Parsloe and Leedham 2009). This chapter highlights insights into eMentoring's developmental phase, both in terms of the proposed technology-enabled mentoring interface and the cross-cultural collaborations taking place between academia and communities.