Mentorship Program

Mentorship Program. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

I don’t know about you but I’ve always learn better and easier when someone shows me and advises me on a plan of action. Vicky Scharlau with the Washington Wine Industry Foundation is in the process of developing a mentorship program.

SCHARLAU: During the auction at the WAWGG convention the Wine Industry Foundation we had this fund to need and we called it the Mentor Fund. And we started with saying that Batman mentored Robin and Obi Wan Kenobi mentored Anakin Skywalker and Luke Skywalker so we’re trying to set up what the word mentor meant.

She says this is not about training people to be leaders.

SCHARLAU: Some professions actually have mentoring program but today the wine industry doesn’t have anything like that. So last year we created the leadership fund but the industry identified the need is not just about training people to be leaders, this is about having relationships with someone who’s been in the industry for a longer period of time who’s willing to mentor those that are up and coming.

They have raised something like $23-thousand dollars to date for the program and are ready to move the program forward.

SCHARLAU: We’ll be putting this together in the next 6 months. We have this next generation group and there’s probably two or three dozen of an audience that are interested in being mentors. So now we need to identify those people who are willing to help mentor and we need to establish the formal process.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.