Humans of LVCF – Mentorship and the story of Maturity

Aside from befriending with other scholarship recipients, LVC students also have an invaluable opportunity to connect with Mentors in the Fund’s Mentorship program. The program was initiated with a view to promoting life values as well as giving better orientation for the scholars. During the past 4 years, the program has witnessed myriad inspirational and progressive mentorship stories, one of which belongs to Mentor Vo Minh Quan, CEO of Inbound Marketing Partner and Mentee Do Thi Kim Ngan, a student from Foreign Trade University, HCMC.

Having been a mentor of LVCF since 2019 and with long-term experience on the field of Marketing, Mr. Quan has orientated a group of mentees including Ngan, who majored in the same field. The first and foremost impression of Mr. Quan about Ngan was a little girl with faith and seriousness; meanwhile, Ngan was really surprised and really appreciated the modesty and simpleness of such a highly successful businessman.

Looking back after the program, what Mr. Quan considered the most appreciative in his “counterpart” was her progressive manner and eagerness to learn new things. She always prepared for every meeting with her mentor, shared straightforwardly about the difficulty being faced with and needing counselling. After every meeting, Ngan wrote a reflection on what was agreed and advised in the meeting so that she could practice and make change to herself accordingly. It could be seen that Ngan has been more mature after such a year.

In terms of Ngan, she also expressed deep gratitude towards her mentor for helping her realize the importance of family and self-love. “In spite of being constantly busy, Mr. Quan still tried to allocate a specific time to spend with his family, since family was what he gave top priority. That sharing was really touching and provoked my thoughts, then I started to call home more regularly and saw my grandparents being extremely delighted. It was nothing but my love and care that could make my family happy. Since then, I started to be more receptive and learned to put myself in others’ shoes, which significantly enhanced the bonding between myself and my family”, said Ngan.

Considering herself a workaholic who usually took on much work on her shoulders, she admitted to frequently being under pressure. It was Mentor who advised her about the detrimental effects of “such greed” on her health and her own future. He pointed out the fact that overtaking too much work to handle could lead to them being unfinished and even affect other goals. Therefore, a clearly prioritizing agenda was then suggested by Mr. Quan to help Ngan decide and make her work the best she could. “I applied it into my daily life to reorganize my own stuff – my life has been changing positively. I am still intending to try out many new things, but in a more selective approach”, Ngan shared enthusiastically.

If required to describe the Mentorship program in just one single word, Ngan believed “understanding” would be the best choice. From her perspectives, listening and sympathizing with someone were worth more than giving advice. The reasons stemmed from the fact that each person had his own life with different backgrounds, status and experiences, which might cause some misjudgments and misleading to others in case they were not in others’ shoes.

“I am a lucky mentee to be accompanied by such a good listener. My mentor believes in the values of our own identities, hence always giving guiding questions so that we could find the suitable answers to our problems, instead of judging our actions or imposing his solutions. I feel it is a comfortable environment in which I could be assured so express my own concerns”.

Regarding Mr. Quan, this is not the first time he has taken the role of a mentor; therefore, it is advantageous for him to easily understand and share with mentees. Moreover, he considers partaking Mentorship program a privilege for students with disadvantaged backgrounds which formerly caused them certain emotional hurts. On the other hand, that would also be a motivation for them to make efforts and head forward in life.

Having wide experiences which he collected as a predecessor, Mr. Quan, therefore, can give his mentees some foods for thoughts to make appropriate adjustments to their future plans, aiming at happiness and success. Nevertheless, according to him, a mentor can merely keep one company for a certain period of time and exert external influence on mentees’ process of maturity. “The key factor for a mentee’s sustainable progress lies in his seriousness and sincerity in the program, in which they are actively and meticulously involved, and apply what they acquire from the connection into practice. I did mentor various individuals from different networks. Mentoring Luong Van Can scholars requires me a distinct approach, in comparison to older and more experienced mentees. It is the happiness of seeing my mentee develop better day by day that sets the motivation for me to set out on this journey”, Mr. Quan said.

Aiming at bringing more values to the students’ development and simultaneously widening mentoring networks, Luong Van Can Fund respectfully invite individuals who wish to contribute to the community via sharing and supporting students in their development to become mentors of the Fund.

🌠 For registration, please visit the link: https://lvcfund.org.vn/dong-hanh-cung-quy-lvc/

🌠 For more details regarding the Mentorship program, please refer to the link: https://tinyurl.com/lvcf-mentorship2020

🌠 For any question, please email mentorship@lvcfund.org.vn