Mentorship Programme for 1st and 2nd year university/college students
You’ve just completed matric and are excited to start your new journey. Your venture into university or college is set to be an exciting one. As exciting as this is, you’re a little nervous and apprehensive about this new venture on which you are about to embark. There is a lot riding on this. The dreams and hope you have for yourself. Your parents’ expectation and what you expect of yourself. You are not sure how you are going to juggle it all.
You’re excited to be a young adult, making your own choices and own decisions. You get to decide what you do and when you do it. You want to do it all, make your parents proud, make yourself proud and have some fun too. It’s going to be tough to manage it all!
The Thusanang Programme can assist you! This is a 7-month mentorship initiative designed to
guide and support young adults in achieving their highest ideals.
Why Join the Thusanang Programme?
Engage with fellow mentees and mentors in a supportive, faith-based environment.
Receive mentorship from practicing Catholic mentors committed to your success.
Utilize a specialized framework to overcome challenges and achieve your goals.
Engage with fellow mentees and mentors in a supportive, faith-based environment.
The Focus of the Thusanang Programme:
The programme will span 7 months of group coaching, with the opportunity of mentorship, if so desired. The focus of the programme will be on Flourishing. How can you be the best version of you and make your studies a success.
The programme will focus on tools that will help you in your studies and in your relationship towards your studies. It will also touch on tools that can help at an interpersonal level.
What Can You Expect?
- Flourishing: What does flourishing look like and what does it look like for you.
- Challenges: How can flourishing help with challenges.
- Self-mastery: What is it and how do you develop it?
- Resolutions: How you formulate effective resolutions.
- Re-framing: Discovering it, identifying it and using your intellect
- Complaining: How we can conquer complaining and turn it into a benefit
- Mindfulness: What is it exactly and how can it help me?
- Challenging self: How to gain mastery over your actions by challenging yourself to exceed your usual performance, striving for new and better ways of doing things
The programme will cover the following topics
Testimonials
Sandra Aguibe
I would firstly like to humbly express my gratitude to the Mater Dolorosa Catholic Church for making this very helpful programme for the youth and to my mentor for the consistency and great work that they put into our mentor-mentee sessions. My experience in this mentorship programme was one of the best experiences I had in 2024.
My mentor made the programme to be the best, fun and comforting experience. We were able to establish a safe and open bond with each other thus making the mentor-mentee sessions to be as beneficial as possible because I could share problems, I was having trouble with, have general conversations, get to know each other and even share achievements I got through their help and useful advice.
Seeing that I was in my first year at university during this period, I learnt a number of important things and skills such as time management, mental health management and many more which I carried throughout the whole year. I even received help with school assignments and study tips. On top of everything, the meeting dates were flexible and we both planned on times we felt comfortable and considered best to meet up and have our meeting, which I found to be another nice quality of the sessions.
Therefore for these reasons and other various positive benefits and impacts, I kindly encourage my fellow youth to consider and take part in this mentorship programme.
Anonymous
One such case was the anxiety and the resulting apprehension I had toward arduous work, particularly my studies seeing my studies as a daunting mountain that I had to climb. I was stuck looking at the mountain in fear and dread for a long time; however, with the help of the Optimal Work podcast, I learned valuable lessons in overcoming this dread and anxiety, especially the skill of reframing. The big mountain that was impossible to climb now became a series of little hills through basic easy to implement tools such as scheduling. Instead of having to study and do an entire semester’s work in a couple of days my mentor recommended I start scheduling. By studying for just two hours per day my whole university life became far less stressful and anxiety-inducing and ultimately fulfilling.
Keke Makhetha
Optimal work has helped me to be able to realize that I’ve been setting big and unattainable targets in my work. I’ve learnt to prioritize small targets, which are attainable that eventually lead to the bigger goal.
Nicholas Stiekema
My experience with OptimalWork has been very insightful, and interesting!
Here are some examples of the things that have stayed with me since doing the MasterClass.
I complain most often internally to myself. Surely that isn’t too bad? This course has taught me that, in fact, it is bad, both because those complaints mean I still perceive a challenge as a threat, and also because I fooled myself into thinking I don’t complain, since it isn’t said out loud. But to “Almost never complain” is to reframe all negative thoughts around challenges as an opportunity for growth, even if the thoughts are not yet words said to others.
Natércia Faustino
Being a lifelong scholar of psychology, with a keen interest in neuroscience, the Optimal Work programme brought the best of both worlds together for me. The programme is online, with recorded sessions and tools to facilitate your own note taking. This makes it so accessible to the working person and to those studying. The sessions are no longer than 8 minutes, which means they are in “bite site” bits, allowing you time to process what has been said. The recording also mean that you can go back to lessons and revisit what they said and apply it to your current situation. I found this a very useful tool both personally and to impart what I had learned to others.
Brendan Savary
I truly believe the Optimal Work programme to be the most powerful productivity and psycho-educational tool available. It has helped me bring my highest ideals to a variety of situations. From allowing me to work and study with more enthusiasm and enjoyment, to having more patience with colleagues and clients, to bringing the best of myself to my wife and kids, it has had an impact in multiple aspects of my life. The Inventory is an empowering tool to provide a way to track self-growth while still always leaving room for further improvement.
Being a clinician myself, I find the science behind Dr Majeres’ approach impressive. By building upon principles of Acceptance Commitment Therapy and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, whilst incorporating the latest discoveries in neuroscience, he has made powerful psycho-educational tools simple and accessible for everyone.
How to participate?
If you are interested in participating in this programme, please complete the following form