Gratitude and shared learning marked the balance of the PROVOCA 2022 mentoring program

Mentors and students of the PROVOCA Program valued the initiative as a unique intergenerational space for women in STEM, collecting friendships and learning at the end of their 2022 activities.

After 8 months of training, Chilean mentors and students completed a positive closure of the free PROVOCA 2022 mentoring program, a journey full of emotions, learning self-training and accompaniment tools, communication and operational skills, and the development of support networks among women with a vocation in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (called STEM).

On January 30 and 31, mentors and students took turns meeting at the offices of AUI/NRAO, creator and executor of the initiative, to close their training program in a process of reflection and feedback. In the case of the students, dedicating themselves to analyzing the learning and its relationship with the objectives set at the beginning of the program, and in the case of the mentors, analyzing the experience of their training in 2021 now performing their role as mentors in 2022.

In each instance, they evaluated each other’s performance, rated the knowledge acquired and commented on the impact of each aspect and part of their training. Although the closing process of this annual program concludes at the end of February, its organizers are already reaping a successful balance, noting that the vast majority of its participants, both mentors and students, would be willing to participate again and recommend the application by other professionals, high school and higher education students with STEM vocational concerns.

The participants of the 2022 version described the contribution of the mentoring program as a “gift” that allowed them not only to know the perspective and experience of those who follow STEM careers, but also to recognize in other women some perceptions, feelings and attitudes that can be promoters or detractors of a vocational path. After laughs and emotional comments; girls, young people and adults that make up the PROVOCA network, recognized in this experience, reciprocal learning, the advantages of co-building a network of contacts and the possibility that a life testimony helps other women not to repeat the same mistakes, confirming your STEM vocational selection.

The program allows not only to learn tools to improve student and work performance through self-awareness workshops, communication and operational skills, mobilization, transformation and leadership actions, but also to offer an accompaniment service to peers who face doubts and obstacles in their STEM trajectory. The program for the students was carried out in a hybrid mode with face-to-face and remote activities, which allowed young people from all over the country to participate in its activities, and included 9 training sessions, a welcome, a feedback session and will have as a final milestone the student graduation in March.

PROVOCA is, for the mentors, an opportunity to give new meaning to the female experience in STEM and for the students, the instance to identify individual goals and design (during the accompaniment with the mentors), a roadmap to achieve them. The mentors live a process of transformation, recognizing that their own history can be useful for other women and thus broaden their view of the same reality, based on sorority conceived as a social and emotional pact built between women who seek to transform Chilean society from individual contribution. AUI/NRAO congratulates its graduates and wishes them a nice holiday in preparation for March, when they will have their graduation ceremony.