In Lusaka, Zambia, Be That Girl partners gathered to shape a new model for impactful mentoring.

A Gathering with Purpose

From June 5 to 8, 2025, youth mentors, educators, and organizational leaders from Be That Girl partner organisations convened in Lusaka for a four-day training hosted by the Be That Girl Foundation in collaboration with Mothers Without Borders.

More than just a capacity-building event, the gathering marked the official launch of the Be That Girl Mentor’s Guide - a dynamic new curriculum designed to reshape how mentorship is practiced in communities, particularly in support of adolescent girls and young women.

The training brought together participants from eight organizations: CAMFED, Second Mile Foundation, Umino, Generation Rise, Loropio Girls’ High School, Andiamo Trust, Girl MOVE Academy, and Mothers Without Borders. These groups represented a broad geographical span, with participants from Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Switzerland, and the United States. Despite the different geographic backgrounds, the organisations have something powerful in common: they are all working to implement impactful mentoring programs that can help young women realise their full potential.

This convergence of global experience and local insight created a powerful platform for shared learning - and a collective commitment to mentorship that is participatory, emotionally grounded, and contextually relevant. As one participant said, “Meeting participants from other organisations and learning about their work—as well as possible ways of collaboration—was incredibly valuable.”

A Curriculum Grounded in Trust and Action

The curriculum focuses on five foundational themes:

Building Trust
Health and Wellness
Education and Work
Preparing for Your Future
Civic Engagement and Human Rights

These themes are delivered not through lectures but through movement, roleplay, mindfulness, and open dialogue. Every element is designed to reflect the lived realities of adolescents while giving mentors tools to reach youth with both structure and sensitivity.

As one attendee reflected, the training “opened my eyes to other ways of conducting a session” and showed how to “create safe, inclusive spaces for my mentees and use active listening and empathy to build trust.” Another added that the “session routine, the 11 Bs, the energizers, and the emotional check-ins” made the experience both practical and deeply engaging.

The 11 BEs - Be engaging, Be an elephant, Be aware, Be a referee, Be a team player, Be prepared, Be flexible, Be positive, Be focused, Be a captain, Be real - offered a playful yet powerful framework for mentors to embody essential qualities during sessions. These guiding principles reinforced the curriculum’s emphasis on presence, adaptability, and authenticity, giving facilitators practical touchpoints for how to lead with empathy and energy.

Rooted in these values, the curriculum was developed and co-led by Jeffrey DeCelles, a curriculum design expert with extensive experience in sport- and play-based education, and the training was co-led by Amellia Chifodya, a Zimbabwean youth development specialist with deep expertise in gender-responsive facilitation. Together, they delivered a training experience grounded in evidence, empathy, and adaptability.

Reversing Roles to Build Insight

The training’s opening phase asked participants to assume the role of the very youth they serve. Divided into small teams, mentors created group names, chants, and shared agreements - mirroring the early bonding experiences adolescents often undergo in safe, facilitated spaces.

The group chose the name Ubuntu Achievers, invoking the African philosophy “I am because we are.” Their guiding chant - simple yet powerful - would echo throughout the training, embodying the collaborative spirit of the program.

This role-reversal exercise was far more than symbolic. As one participant put it, “I felt safe to feel vulnerable, express my feelings, and have abundant support from a lot of people.” It gave mentors an opportunity to experience the openness they ask of the girls they mentor—and to reflect on what it means to hold space with care and compassion.

From Learning to Leading

By the third day, participants began transitioning into facilitation roles. Working in small groups, each mentor led or co-led a full session using the newly introduced five-part Session Routine, which sets the structure for mentors to deliver each session:

An energizer to open the session with connection and movement
An emotional check-in using verbal or visual tools that help young women describe how they are feeling
A "Take Five" mindfulness exercise
A core activity aligned with one of the five curriculum themes
A check-out and reflection period, with optional one-on-one follow-up time

This routine is designed to be replicable and adaptable across varied settings - urban and rural, school-based and informal - and ages of mentees. Mentors quickly demonstrated their fluency with the model, showing confidence not only in the material but in how they shaped it for their local contexts.

One participant said that being given the opportunity to lead a session and receive real-time feedback “was one of the most valuable parts.” Another shared, “Being a mentor has been hard when preparing for sessions. Having this amazing guide is so helpful—making my work easier. The structure stands out for me.”

Knowledge Sharing Across Borders

Each participating organization presented its own mentoring work, offering insight into approaches as diverse as reproductive health education, career planning, and psychosocial support. While each context differed, shared themes emerged - particularly around the importance of trust, consistency, and agency in adolescent development.

One mentor reflected that “the training deepened my understanding of how to support young people in a way that is both empowering and respectful of their individuality.” Another added that the sessions “helped me see how I can integrate mentorship into different areas of my life.”

What the training underscored was not uniformity but coherence. The curriculum offers a shared framework, but is designed to be owned and locally adapted. In practice, this means each organization left not with instructions, but with a toolkit - meant to evolve with the communities they serve.

Inside the room: what participants said about the ‘Be That Girl’ Training

After the training ended, 46 participants submitted their reflections through a post-event survey, and the results paint a vivid picture of a program that was both timely and profoundly effective.

Every single respondent rated the training positively, with 93.5 percent describing it as “Excellent” and the remaining 6.5 percent as “Good.” There were no neutral or negative ratings - a rare outcome in any professional development context. What emerges from the data is not just a sentiment of appreciation, but one of genuine enthusiasm and professional validation.

The content itself appears to have struck a resonant chord. All 46 respondents agreed that the training helped them in their work with mentors and participants, signaling that the material presented was not abstract but directly applicable to real-life settings. Many referenced the usefulness of the session routine and the structured approach of the Be That Girl Mentor’s Guide as valuable tools to support young women through mentorship.

Confidence was another clear outcome. When asked about their readiness to implement the session routine introduced during the training, 100 percent of respondents said they felt either “confident” or “very confident.” This isn’t a vague endorsement - it’s evidence that the training instilled both knowledge and the assurance to act on it. Such confidence is critical in mentorship settings, where uncertainty can hinder the support young people need.

Perhaps most powerfully, every participant said they would recommend the training to a colleague or friend. This level of advocacy speaks volumes. In the nonprofit and social development space, where programs are often under scrutiny for effectiveness and relevance, such a unified endorsement is as rare as it is meaningful.

The survey also revealed a strong desire for future engagement. When asked whether BTG should organize more in-person training opportunities, 95.7 percent said yes, suggesting that this training addressed a hunger for practical, grounded guidance - and sparked a demand for more. Topics proposed for future sessions included financial literacy, entrepreneurship, communication skills, and preventing sexual abuse - highlighting the complex, multidimensional challenges that mentors face in the field.

The training also served as a powerful connector. Respondents widely reported that the relationships formed during the event were “useful” or “very useful” to their work, citing new collaborations and shared strategies across organizations. The Be That Girl Mentor’s Guide training wasn’t just a four-days event, it became a launchpad for peer-to-peer learning and cross-sector support.

Several highlighted how the experience gave them a new sense of clarity. “I gained the confidence and practical tools to mentor effectively,” one mentor said. Another emphasized the value of the training's atmosphere: “The facilitation techniques, experience sharing, and positive approach stood out to me.”

Participants consistently praised the structure and flow of the curriculum. “It provides structure and uniformity for conducting sessions,” one noted. Another appreciated “how the energizers, check-ins, and team time made every session easy to follow, insightful, and engaging.”

Carrying the Work Forward

What mentors took with them at the end of the training was not just a curriculum but also a delivery technique that underscored being present, engaged and active listening. Mentors carried with them a renewed sense of clarity about their role, deeper empathy for those they support, and a shared understanding that effective mentorship does not begin with answers - it begins with listening.

Several mentors expressed how they had grown both personally and professionally. One participant shared, “Learning how I can also integrate mentorship in different areas of my life was a powerful takeaway.” Another said the training “helped me introspect about certain things in life which are often overlooked.”

In an era when young people across the continent face mounting challenges - from education gaps to gender-based violence to climate-driven displacement - this model of mentorship offers something rare: a structure that holds space for complexity, while insisting on dignity.

What took root in Lusaka will grow far beyond its four-day span. The mentors who gathered are already bringing this work home - session by session, story by story, girl by girl, with a mission to empower girls to lead self-determined lives.