Madrinha Summer Party 2023
From left to right: Mentors Bex Hicks, Lucy Dowling, Trustees Sarah Haidry and Dr Casmir Chanda, Madrinha Trust COO, S-J Heany, KHULA SA CEO, Debbie Heustice and Mentor Dr Cassie Coleman
THANKING ALL OUR MENTORS, CHARITY PARTNERS AND FRIENDS
We had a wonderful gathering of mentors and trustees at our Summer Drinks Party on Monday 3 July at the May Fair Hotel, London. Jania Geoghegan welcomed us all and emphasised the importance of this very special mentoring relationship to our Madrinha “Scholars” and to Madrinha as a whole. Our mentors bring so much energy and vitality to all that we do and hope to achieve in the future. It was especially enjoyable to introduce some of our new mentors to the group and for them to spend time talking to all of us.
We were very fortunate to have KHULA’s CEO, Debbie Heustice with us, who also enjoyed meeting everyone especially the mentors mentoring the KHULA students. It was great to be brought up to date with all the good work being achieved by KHULA and how life changing the Madrinha scholarships have been to this charity.
Currently we have 7 KHULA alumni, all in full-time employment and 5 KHULA scholars graduating this year, with a further 11 scholars currently completing their university degree courses.
This special relationship with KHULA has extended to another of our SA partner charities, Teach the Nation (SA), and together with Madrinha we are now in the second year of a collaborative Fellowship Programme based out of KHULA for those graduating students thinking about going into Education or wanting to do a project that adds a few more skills to their CV.
MENTEES BECOME SCHOLARS
One of the new changes brought about by our Trustees is that we feel that Mentees should all be called Madrinha Scholars and carry this badge of success through to their CVs and LinkedIn Profiles.
MADRINHA REACHES OVER 100 ALUMNI!
We are super excited to be announcing that Madrinha Trust will have funded over 100 Alumni at the end of this year, and we are in the throes of an alumni up-date survey to mark this wonderful achievement. This will be covered in our 2023 Annual Report.
ALL Madrinha Trust alumni are in full-time employment. This is a great achievement by them and of course Madrinha and the mentors who have fully supported them to reach their goals.
2023 CAREER SKILLS PROGRAMME HIGHLIGHTS (CSP)
We can hardly believe that we are coming to the end of our third Career Skills Programme on 19 July 2023, “Toastmasters”.
With huge thanks to all the outside professionals who gave their time for free and enabled this year’s CSP be the best to date. Madrinha was overjoyed with the take up and contribution from our scholars; we are also grateful to our own Trustees Gianni, Sui Chin and Vanessa for their workshops.
After our “feedback” workshop on 5 July, it was not surprising that Thendo Makgatho’s finance workshop “Top Tips for Managing your Finances” came out tops with nearly all the students – we especially wanted to thank you Thendo, as this is your third year with Madrinha’s CSP.
Madrinha was very lucky to have Leah Caseley from LinkedIn, hosting the LinkedIn workshop “Your Digital Presence”, an invaluable session for all.
Microsoft SA’s Workshop “Transferable Skills” was truly inspiring and the incredible energy from all three contributors Priya Naidoo (Head of Graduate Recruitment), Hluma Magodla and Thapelo Monakedi changed all our lives that afternoon and resulted in one of our major highlights of this year when Nomfundo Mfeka was awarded 1 of only 9 internships in the whole of South Africa at Microsoft SA.
Nomfundo starts her internship on 1 August and on behalf of ALL of us at Madrinha Trust, CONGRATULATIONS and GOOD LUCK.
We also congratulate Hannah Hill for her exceptional good news having been awarded her first corporate engagement at Delta Partners in SA as a Business Analyst in May of this year.
We also want to thank our partner charities who all ran workshops this year, KHULA, Teach the Nation SA and MAD Leadership Foundation all based out of SA.
There are other great achievements from Vanessa Gxekwa, studying medicine in SA who was invited to be one of this year’s Programme Directors for her University of Pretoria’s Health Sciences Faculty Day “Co-Create, Collaborate and Innovate” event in August 2023.
These are just a few of our SA Highlights…
MADRINHA TRUST AWARDS
Friday 1st July 2022 via Zoom
Each year we run these awards to highlight individual students’ exceptional achievements and to give confidence and support for their upcoming interviews. A Madrinha award is an accolade they can highlight and be proud of. With special thanks to Mark Laverty (mentor) and Will Dear (Trustee) for helping to select the top students this year.
You can see a full list of winners here.
2023 NEW SCHOLARS
A great year so far, with the standard of applicant getting stronger, Madrinha is especially proud to be providing scholarships to students as follows:
2 in Ghana
2 in Malawi
5 in Tanzania
5 in Uganda
8 in SA
3 in Palestine
This brings the current sponsorship total to 25.
We will add a further four new scholars from our exciting new Vietnamese partner charity Saigon Children in Autumn 2023 bringing our total sponsored student number in 2023 to 29.
SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS
We are especially excited that our students are embracing LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Zoom as their tools for future success. With more and more interviewers and first interviewees using these platforms we are proud to be giving our students the right skillsets to enable them to do well.
We recently invited people to share their Instagram stories on Madrinha’s Instagram which we are sharing live on our website Instagram: @madrinha_trust.
WELCOMING NEW MENTORS
Thank you to our new mentors who have started their mentoring journey with Madrinha this year. Ben Howard, Eva Celaya, Hannah Charrington, Helen Lafferty, John Humm, Kami Soltisyk, Laure Sioné, Lindsey Ahmet, Maurina Baron, Michel Michaelides, Muvirimi Kupara, Nishma Shah and Thoraya Amman we enjoyed meeting some of you at the Summer Party and we look forward to inviting you to our other meet ups later in the year.
FINALLY..
Finally, as we look forward to our Summer holidays we also look forward to hearing from you on our WhatsApp Groups and seeing you – our mentors – in Autumn at the monthly meet ups at the Royal Court Theatre Bar in Sloane Square. Dates to be confirmed via WhatsApp.
Thank you all for the support you give to your Madrinha Scholars and of course to the Madrinha Trust.
All the very best
Jania and the Madrinha Team