Gender

In 2022, female mentors represented 42% of all mentors. Among mentees, the Class of 2022 consisted of 28% men, and 74% women. This gender disparity between male and female mentees cannot be explained only by the preponderance of young women in the fields of health and human development. At MultiPOD, the vast majority of applications almost immediately accepted since 2017 have been submitted by female candidates. It would be necessary to determine why these gender differences in candidate selection persist and which factors may account for these differences. (Take this, young men!).

Geographic distribution

In 2022, our 94 participants (mentors and mentees) were born or are currently residing in 51 different countries:

• Central and West Africa: Benin, Cameroon, DR Congo, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Ivory Coast, The Gambia, Togo, Mali

• East and South Africa: Botswana, Eswatini, Kenya, Mozambique, Uganda, Somalia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, Madagascar

• North Africa: Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco

• Middle East: Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Oman

• North America: Canada, Mexico, United States

• Central America: Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama

• South America: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru

• English, French, and Dutch Caribbean: Haiti, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Grenada

• Western Europe: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland

• Northern Europe: Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, Lithuania, Estonia

• Southern Europe: Croatia, Italy, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey

• Eastern Europe and Caucasus: Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, Poland, Romania

• Central Asia: Afghanistan, Belarus

• South Asia: Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka

• Southeast Asia: Myanmar, Indonesia, Philippines

• East Asia: China, Japan, Singapore, Korea

• Oceania: Australia, New Zealand

Academic and Professional Background

As in previous years, more than 80% of our Mentors came from the area of health. Among the 8 Mentees tent are physicians and medical students and the remaining 42 young women and men have been trained in more than 25 disciplines, to which the following areas have been added:

Sustainability Science and Engineering, Historical Forces and Politics, Government & Society, Quantitative Neuroscience, Parasitology and Entomology, Human Physiology.

Languages

40% of our Mentees are bilingual and 50% are fluent in three or more languages. Although English is our working language, MultiPOD Mentoring's Mentees and Mentors speak 70(+) languages. These include the six official languages of the United Nations (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish), and this year, we added native speakers of Filipino (Tagalog), Kannada, Kiswahili, Korean, Mongolian, and Urdu.

Our first five years

In October of 2022, we presented a summary of MultiPOD’s five-year experience (2017-2021) at the Annual Conference of the Mentoring Institute of the University of New Mexico. Thus far, MultiPOD has been successful in helping more than 300 mentees achieve or come very close to achieving their stated goals for the year: 55% to 60% of mentees have obtained or are on their way to obtain a desired job or enter an advanced academic program, and more than 95% of our “graduates” would recommend the program to their peers and friends.

We have also learned a few lessons, i.e., how to identify and mentor talented young people from almost anywhere in the world; how to use MultiPOD’s framework and approach for successful mentoring (“Nine Questions About Your Future” and “Curriculum for Life”), how to help mentees “achieve or almost achieve” their goals in 7 or more sessions (+ homework) in 9 months; and how to design, manage, and implement a complex mentoring program with worldwide outreach with very few human and financial resources.

MultiPOD has already surpassed its exploratory phase and is now ready to extend and expand its sphere of action and “real-world” experience in international mentoring through regional (geographic) and linguistic Chapters, in the next quinquennium.

List of Mentors and Mentees

List of mentees and mentors (and countries of birth) participating in the Class of 2022.