How Mary’s Meals International launched and embedded the Charity Mentoring Network
Mary’s Meals International joined the Charity Mentoring Network (CMN) in July and began onboarding employees shortly afterwards. Although still new to the programme, the organisation (led operationally by Learning and Development partner Ashleigh McNeilly) moved quickly to plan, launch and promote the mentoring offer across the organisation.
About Mary’s Meals and Why Mentoring Matters
Mary’s Meals is a global movement that provides life-changing daily meals to over three million children in some of the world’s poorest communities. With teams working across many countries, their mission is rooted in simplicity, service and stewardship and the belief that everyone has something valuable to contribute. As an organisation committed to developing and supporting people, mentoring is a natural fit. Mentoring creates opportunities for colleagues to learn from one another, build confidence, share knowledge and strengthen the collaborative culture that underpins their work. Joining the Charity Mentoring Network allowed Mary’s Meals to offer an accessible, flexible development tool to all family members, helping them grow both personally and professionally in service of the children that they exist to support.
The launch: creating visibility through communications
Mary’s Meals began by introducing CMN through a series of internal communications.
Ashleigh explains: “There were a number of communications via our internal comms platform. What we have tried to do is make a bit of a brand in terms of the Charity Mentoring Network, so when we do send out any comms, people recognise what it is and what it’s all about.”
Early communications included:
- A “coming soon” announcement
- A formal launch communication
- A reminder message with login links a couple of weeks later
These comms pointed people to the organisation’s newly created SharePoint hub.
Engaging colleagues: connect and share sessions
Before opening access to all employees, Mary’s Meals delivered connect and share sessions for managers and employees.
Ashleigh says these sessions were an opportunity to help managers understand how CMN could be used to support their teams. The sessions covered:
- How mentoring fits within Mary’s Meals’ personal development approach
- An explanation of what mentoring is
- An introduction to the partnership with CMN
- A live tour of the mentoring platform
- An overview of the resources available
- A walkthrough of the newly created SharePoint hub
A recording of the session was also uploaded to SharePoint for easy access.
Creating a mentoring hub
A central part of the Mary’s Meals approach was establishing a SharePoint space as a single destination mentoring resources. This included:
- A prominent banner with direct access to the mentoring platform
- A direct link for employees to request help or follow-up
- CMN resources such as:
- How to find a mentor or mentee
- What is mentoring?
- FAQs
- Training videos and guides
Maintaining momentum after launch
Mary’s Meals includes the following CMN reminders in its quarterly L&D newsletter:
- A reminder about CMN
- A direct link to the SharePoint mentoring hub
- A success story from a staff member who had already established a mentoring relationship
Ashleigh also created a campaign to support National Mentoring Day using CMN’s promotional resources, adjusted into Mary’s Meals’ house style. The campaign included:
- Weekly pre-event communications
- Posts via the CMN Teams channel
- A digital poster and link on National Mentoring Day itself
Lessons Learned
When asked what advice she would give to others starting out, Ashleigh shared reflections based directly on her experience:
1 Don’t expect immediate uptake
Because employees set their personal development goals at the start of the year, launching in July meant many had already committed to other development priorities.
2 Consider timing
Ashleigh says that mentoring activity slows as the organisation approaches its busiest period so be mindful of the best times to promote and engage colleagues.
3 Align with organisational L&D strategy
Demonstrate how mentoring fits in with existing learning and development frameworks.
4 Speak to users and share feedback
Ashleigh advises seeking out feedback from users of the platform so that you can learn from their experience. And to also feed this back to CMN so that they can learn from the feedback too.
Top tips for new Charity Mentoring Network members
- Brand your communications so people immediately identify mentoring-related messages
- Create a one-stop hub so that resources, links, training and enquiries can be easily accessed
- Run launch events for managers and staff so they understand what mentoring is and how it works
- Communicate regularly through newsletters, emails and Teams
- Share success stories of early adopters and their experiences to build confidence and awareness.
To find out how to get your organisation involved, please come along to one of our upcoming virtual coffee mornings