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.

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David McCann - Brother can you spare an economic policy?

David McCann on the Stephen Nolan Show

David McCann (@dmcbfs) is a researcher, academic and writer for Slugger O'Toole and The Journal.ie, below he has written a guest post and laid out a big challenge on the economy for people on both sides in Northern Ireland.

There are some realities in Northern Ireland that seem to remain constant. We have bitterness and mistrust among sections of the two main communities and sense of political paralysis in Stormont. But another reality which is in fact more like a nightmare is our sluggish economy which contrary to protestations of some of our political parties is not performing as well as they would argue it is.  

Northern Ireland theoretically does have a relatively low level of unemployment at around 7 per cent. However these figures hide two things, 1) the very high level of people employed in the public sector (31 per cent) and 2) the staggering levels of youth unemployment which some estimates have at being above 20 per cent.

Time to leave the country I hear you say? Well with these figures I wouldn’t blame you but to borrow the old Charles Haughey mantra of ‘come to my table with solutions’ I aim to give some positive suggestions for Northern Ireland to emerge from this dark malaise.

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