Due to frequent disruptions to their education, as well as schools and educational programmes for displaced populations being generally under-resourced and under-capacitated, refugees may have lacked some of the coaching or advice that students in more stable educational systems may receive. This includes in terms of the development of study skills and learning strategies, which students are formally taught but also develop through the routine of a reliable school experience, as well as advice on the next steps in life. With higher student: teacher ratios in refugee settlements because of split shifts in schools, and fewer teachers whose qualifications are recognised, displaced learners may also have fewer opportunities to get advice on what opportunities for further study are available and appropriate for them. When teachers are also from the same background as their students, and have been displaced to the new host country too, they may lack knowledge about what the tertiary education system or labour market consists of in that new environment. 

This represents a gap that we felt a dedicated mentorship programme might be able to fill. Towards this end, points to consider are:

• What sort of mentorship might students and teaching staff benefit from or want? What topics would like they covered?
• Where does it make sense to recruit mentors from? 
• What knowledge is important that the mentors have? Does this mean recruiting mentors from the same country as displaced people are in, or perhaps from their country of origin if people intend to repatriate soon?
• Who will coordinate the mentorship programme, including recruitment, training (for both mentors but also mentees, who may not be clear on what role mentors intend to fill), oversight, and responding to any issues?
• Do you need to establish clear parameters for the programme i.e. the time over which it will run, the number of meetings per week, formal check-ins with mentors and mentees?
• How will the contributions of mentors be recognised? Will they be given a small stipend, or a certificate to acknowledge their voluntary contribution to the scheme?
• Will the mentorship end when the programme ends or is there a reason/demand for continuing it?
• How will you balance confidentiality within the mentorship scheme, with a mentor’s duty to disclose particular forms of information that the mentee might share with them?

It may also be useful for the students and teaching staff on bridging programmes to arrange for specialist speakers to come in. These may be career talks, where individuals speak about how they got to where they are now and provide advice to students on similar trajectories, or motivational speakers. If the majority of teaching on the programme has been delivered by just a few members of staff, this can provide some fresh perspectives and voices on the programme. 

A representative from AUB put the need for mentorship in the following words, highlighting the psychological importance for students’ confidence in them being reliable and tailored support: “I advise also working on career guidance program Because this is what really helps the institution, the students, and the community to be able to understand the pathways and to be able to take decisions on their pathways and this will minimise the number of dropouts because if they understand they have different options to continue their education and different opportunities to get either a semi professional ah education and get to the labour market as a technician, it’s better than dropping out and saying, I cannot do anything, am not good.”

FFA Mentorship and Career Support Based on experience from PADILEIA, and feedback from the Mastercard Foundation Scholars at AUB and the Universities of Makerere and Edinburgh, a Mentorship Coordination team was created to establish a mentorship programme for students on FFA. This team, led by the Mastercard Foundation Scholars and supported by experienced colleagues at AUB, was tasked with designing and implementing a mentorship programme, including recruitment, mentor-mentee matching, induction and supervision. This also responded to demand from students within FFA who were insistent in their requests for mentors as a source of support for deciding on the right university degree programme for them, and then in supporting them to find and apply for scholarships. Some students wanted course-specific support, and thus to be paired with a mentor who had very similar disciplinary interests to them, while some wanted help through more generic and transferable skills. The peer mentors were also seen as being a key source of support for preparing students for the Mature Entry Exam by assisting them in accessing materials that were specific to their chosen subject area.  The Mentorship programme was launched in August to mixed success, in part because of the disruption caused around this time by contextual factors. Without easy access to the learning centres and support with emails due to rolling lockdowns in Uganda, mentors and FFA students struggled to connect, and when the Mature Entry Exam was unexpectedly brought forward, the focus of the programme overwhelmingly swung towards facilitating that process.  During the second semester of FFA, when students were deciding which degree programmes they might like to apply for, FFA also welcomed a variety of speakers to talk through their experiences of selecting and completing different degrees. Speakers included a Lecturer in Social Work from MUK, a university counsellor, and an Economics Professor, to name a few examples. RLP hosted an open day for FFA which included an Assistant Registrar at Makerere University, a Mastercard Foundation Scholar manager, a representative from Windle Trust, a representative from the Office of the Prime Minister, and support group leadership.