Being a Mentor

Rebecca Searleman
Retailer

I’m a twenty-year veteran of the fashion business, who is now a director at Macy’s. My interest in African issues began in college, where I was as a campus activist during the anti-apartheid movement of the 1980’s. Additionally, my studies at the University of Virginia were focused on British colonial and post-colonial history. When I learned of the opportunity of joining the Global Give Back Circle, I leapt at the chance. So many philanthropic organizations are solely focused on financial contributions- or worse- focused on enhancing the vanity of the charitable. The Global Give Back Circle, in contrast, offers the opportunity for building deeply affecting relationships across borders, and it grants destitute girls in Africa a “safe zone” to find themselves at the very moment they are transitioning into womanhood.

Candidly, at the beginning of my mentorship of Elizabeth, I felt that she was helping me more than I was helping her. Two letter cycles into our relationship, my father unexpectedly died. Because Elizabeth and I were just in the process of forging our relationship, I made sure our letter chain continued without interruption during all of the turmoil. She responded with letters of such thoughtful emotion that, quite honestly, were more affecting that the words of many of my relatives and friends. You see, Elizabeth lost her father, too. Not as a forty year-old woman, but as a young girl. She can scarcely remember her father’s role in her life- relatives try to make him real to her- but it’s not the same. What she does remember is his passing and how dramatically things changed afterwards.

Beyond the losses we’ve had, the other bond between Elizabeth and I is writing. The two of us are quite simply in love with writing. From her first letter, I was stunned by her conversational tone and her ability to synthesize her environment into spare, eloquent prose. I am thrilled that her goal is to become a journalist. From what I’ve learned about opportunities for destitute women in Kenya, I know that Elizabeth will have bracing challenges to overcome to reach her goal. I have tried to balance my support of her dream of being a reporter with encouraging her not to close her eyes to other fields that would enable her to have a more secure life. That, to me, is the most challenging part of being a Global Give Back Circle mentor: balancing what should be with what could be.

Elizabeth has never once complained about the conditions she lives in. She still sees the world as a child does, and so she is able to be consumed with the joy of perpetual discovery. She has helped me regain a measure of that youthful sense of discovery; of being struck by the beauty of the ordinary. Elizabeth, to be sure, still has challenges before her, not least of which is overcoming her distaste for Math. But I have been blessed in befriending this exquisite young woman. It is my deepest hope that I have given her a slight fraction of what she has bestowed upon me.

Next: Eleonore's Experience