The Mentor’s Role From the Perspective of Marginalized Young Women Becoming Mentors: Photovoice-Based Research

Abstract

This paper examines the perspective of marginalized young women, training to become mentors for marginalized girls, with respect to the role of the mentor. Taking a critical feminist perspective, this article gives expression to the research participants’ unique knowledge, based on life experience as marginalized girls and their lived experiences. Based on a photovoice research project with 13 participants, all marginalized young women, the findings of this paper identify three main narratives regarding the mentoring role: (1) Mentoring as a relationship; (2) Mentoring as an action for the future; and (3) Organizational belongness—the organization hosting the participants serving as an ideological, value-based, and professional home, enabling the growth of the mentor in her role. The conclusions of the article argue that marginalized young women experience mentoring as a practice that expands beyond its rational aspects, embodying within it a corrective experience of relationships and an opportunity for social change.

It’s Not Just Me, It’s Us, Together: The Embodied of the Wounded Healer in the Role of Sex Trade Survival Mentors—A Critical Mentoring Perspective

“…In contrast, the second body of knowledge relates to volunteers or colleagues with experience of similar challenges, or indeed the same challenge, as the people they are working with, as in the case of ex-prisoners [18], addicts [19], mental health service users [20], and women on the margins and in situations of risk [21]. One expression of this, and one of the most common and relevant forms of semi-professional help relationships, is the practice of mentoring.…”

“…Thus, equality is reflected in the findings, first through mutual identification and shared destiny as a moral starting point [47]. The ability to look "at eye level" [21] serves as a basis for active action when it comes to the experience of re-parenting and when it comes to the aspiration to create hope and save lives.…”

“A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words”: Youth Migration Narratives in a Photovoice

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Social work with young women in security emergencies: An autoethnography of epistemic resistance

“…Several years ago, I worked in the Girls for Girls mentoring program at a college in the Gaza Envelope area (Malka et al, 2021). The training program was for young Jewish and Arab 1 women (aged 17 to 25) from marginalized groups in Israel who were coping with conditions of distress (Krumer-Nevo et al, 2015).…”