Northern Ireland needs more mentors

Entrepreneur Eoin Lambkin and business mentor for Takker wrote in the Belfast Telegraph Business magazine that mentoring should be a key economic policy that could help drive a recovery. He said:

"I would go so far as to say that mentoring could be one of the most important economic tools at our disposal in the flight to turn around our ailing economy. There is not a region in the UK or Ireland that has not written a strategic plan that stretches out until 2020 which includes inward investment, taxation breaks, seed funding, training, increasing visitor numbers – the list goes on.  

I have not seen one plan that mentions mentoring as a ‘key’ component. Mentoring is an activity that anyone with business and social enterprise can get involved in with the potential to generate enormous long term benefits." 

This is what is happening in the city of Chicago under mayor Rahm Emanual's administration with a programme called BAM (Becoming A Man) which works with at-risk adolescents and gives them the right type of mentoring, guidance and nurturing so that they can make the right life choices. Read more on that here.

Northern Ireland should also seek to emulate the Big Brothers, Big Sisters initiative which exists throughout the United States. Read more about that movement here.