QUESTION 1: Based on your extensive experience, how can religious communities make a positive contribution to protecting and empowering vulnerable women? In particular with regards to girls’ education and ending harmful traditional practices?
Sister Eubank: I am part of the general leadership of the Relief Society in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has 176 years of experience answering this question. The Relief Society mandate is to:
Build faith — not just of its own members but the faith of all believing people.
Strengthen families — especially in their freedom to choose, vigorously address abuse and protection, and to promote education, health, and the equal place of men and women.
Provide relief — relief from poverty and dangerous practices, protecting displaced people, safeguarding basic human rights, defending dignity.
In the Relief Society, each woman in every congregation has a peer mentor to connect with monthly or whenever she needs help.
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What is ‘peer mentoring’?
Every woman, in every congregation, has one of these^? Really?Peer mentoring is a form of mentorship that usually takes place between a person who has lived through a specific experience (peer mentor) and a person who is new to that experience (the peer mentee). An example would be an experienced student being a peer mentor to a new student, the peer mentee, in a particular subject, or in a new school. Peer mentors are also used for health and lifestyle changes. For example, clients, or patients, with support from peers, may have one-on-one sessions that meet regularly to help them recover or rehabilitate. Peer mentoring provides individuals who have suffered from a specific life experience the chance to learn from those who have recovered, or rehabilitated, following such an experience. Peer mentors provide education, recreation and support opportunities to individuals. The peer mentor may challenge the mentee with new ideas, and encourage the mentee to move beyond the things that are most comfortable. Most peer mentors are picked for their sensibility, confidence, social skills and reliability.[1]
Critics[2][3] of peer mentoring insist that little is known of the nature of peer mentoring relationships and that there are few consistent studies indicating the outcomes of peer mentoring beyond good feelings among peers and the development of friendships. Peer mentoring led by senior students may discourage diversity and prevent critical analysis of the higher education system.