#YourIIG proudly gathered for the Roots & Wings Mentorship Programme 2021 launch on the 23rd of February at Constantia Insurance Company. It was a great pleasure to host all our Mentors and Mentees at could attend in person, whilst the rest joined via Zoom.
We are honoured to note that we have managed to secure 27 Mentors and 27 Mentees into the Roots & Wings programme.
IIG Deputy President, Thabo Twala opened the ceremony and welcomed all as well as introduced our newly appointed IIG President-Elect, Tshepiso Chocho. Tshepiso thanked all in attendance with special mentions to current IIG President, Darryl Grater as well as other members of the Council. Tshepiso who represents Sasria reiterated that Sasria has an ongoing commitment to educational programmes and is proud to support and be affiliated with the IIG. She has also thanked the Roots & Wings facilitators, Linda Coetzee & Jenna. Tshepiso extended her gratitude to the Mentors for volunteering their time, resources, knowledge and skills and provided some words of encouragement for the Mentees to utilise the programme fully and be fully present in this journey. Our various sponsors, Constantia, Discovery Insure, Emerald Risk and Sasria were also acknowledged and thanked for their generosity.
Tshepiso went on to unpack IIG’s hashtag for 2021 #BeTheDifference whereby we each need to motivate each other to do something different, more so outside of one’s comfort zone.
We were then addressed by Linda Coetzee who proudly acknowledged a room filled with wisdom, expertise and talent. She advised the mentees to take full advantage of this nine-month journey which will involve talking, growing, listening, learning and taking full advantage of having access to top influencers in the insurance industry. Jenna then addressed the mentees and also provided words of encouragement and asked all to repeat the affirmation: “I am, I can, I will” and monitor their own journey throughout the year. One of the 2020 Mentees, Nthabeleng Stamier was invited to take the stage and share her experience of the Roots & Wings journey. She left everyone with quite a powerful quote, “Our deepest fear is not one of being inadequate, but it is one of being powerful beyond measure”.
Thabo Twala once again returned to do the closing and again invited Jabulile Mtimkulu, a previous Class Of student, now a Councillor and responsible for the R&W programme within the Impact & Transformation portfolio, to share some words of wisdom. She also left everyone with a thoughtful quote that the road ahead is best travelled with those who have already travelled along with it.
The formalities ended and all in attendance resumed to the famous R&W “speed-dating” session where everyone is encouraged to move around the room and engage as many people as possible to assist in the final pairing process.
