Organization Utilizes Mentoring Software to Support Persons with Disabilities

The Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work helps people with disabilities break down barriers to employment by giving job seekers the tools and confidence to educate and market themselves. CCRW helps employers become leaders in socially and fiscally responsible hiring and retention practices. More than 1 in 10 working-age Canadians live with disability. CCRW is paving the way to a fully inclusive nation because disability should never stand in the way of ambition.

The Challenge

Normally a live, in-person event, Dolphin Disabilities Mentoring Day is an experiential learning opportunity that utilizes technology to bridge the communication and knowledge gaps between businesses, communities and employment organizations, and persons with disabilities. In the early days of event planning, CCRW was faced with the unprecedented realities of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the challenge of finding a way to create meaningful virtual connections while being forced to eliminate meeting in person.

Highlights

CCRW successfully hosted their DMD event despite the Covid-19 pandemic by moving the conference and mentorship experience to a virtual environment

The Knowledge Transfer Index provided mentorship pairs with the ability to build rapport and establish a meaningful connection in a virtual environment

Program Objectives:

Pollinate focused on supporting CCRW to offer a high impact event in a virtual setting. The goal was to use the Knowledge Transfer Index to create meaningful experiences for both mentors and mentees.
CCRW helped Pollinate to understand the unique goals, challenges and needs of their mentee and mentor populations so we could design an online experience that facilitated cross-pollination throughout the mentoring relationship.
Mentor and Mentees were invited to take the Knowledge Transfer Index assessment and were provided with a Meet Your Match report for their mentoring partner.
A custom DMD conference portal on the Pollinate Platform was launched where mentors and mentees accessed training materials, and other useful information about how to facilitate meaningful connections and conversations around mentoring, and the challenges faced by disabled populations.

Results

Matching participants into mentorship pairs was a fundamental way of ensuring engagement in the event.
35 mentoring pairs successfully navigated the mentorship experience through a dedicated Pollinate Platform group.
Participants were provided with an in-depth understanding of their individual learning style through the Knowledge Transfer Index assessment which evaluates individual needs based on core motivations, natural talents, reference point, physical learning style, resolution style, sorting style and ideal interaction level.
Each mentoring pair was provided with a Meet Your Match report detailing similarities and differences in learning styles for the pair and a roadmap for guiding the mentorship experience.
Mentors and Mentees accessed various supportive learning resources on the Pollinate Platform designed to help maximize their mentorship experience.

Client Testimonials

“I want to say THANK YOU in the strongest way possible. I had a beyond fabulous experience. My mentor and her team were highly motivated, effective, very interesting, and passionate people. They shared with me a great deal of information that gave me a true sense of what they do and more importantly, what they will achieve in future.”

DMD 2020 Mentee

“Thank you for organising this great event, it was a great learning experience for me & everything went so smoothly! Cheers on the success of this event.”

DMD 2020 Mentee

“It was really interesting working with Pollinate to ensure our mentor matches were equipped with the information they needed to have a successful mentorship experience during the DMD event. The Pollinate Knowledge Transfer Index really provides useful insights into the individual learning styles and core motivations of our mentees and mentors.”

Jamie Burton

Chief Business Development Officer, CCRW

Want To Know More?

Ask us about our programs, services, tools, implementation, pricing or anything else: