The Mentor Cooperative

This week I said to Rails we have so many resident help groups and Mentor groups we need a group to to communicate with them all.

It is obvious to me, that Mentors have to evolve, and this Mentor Cooperative is part of that evolution.
As dedicated Mentors we have watched the reduction of the VTeam staff.
As dedicated Mentors we know what new residents want and need, we eat, sleep and breath being a Mentor, we excel at what we choose to do.
The Mentor tag is nothing more than a way to identify who Mentors are, it does not make us super-human.
There is not one Mentor who is better than any Second Life resident. As Mentors we are all Second Life residents.

The aim of this Mentor Cooperative is to bring together the owners of Mentor Groups and Gateway Owners, and any resident help groups with the aim of building a foundation for mentoring in general.
If all responsible and respectable Mentor Groups adopt and retain the good foundations that we all hold dear, then Mentors as a whole will be respected and be a teaching force to be imitated.

There will be a number of owners of this group, mainly so as many time zones are covered as is possible and to provide a diverse knowledge base for the group.
Invited group owners will form the council of the group, and may elect to converse with other group members by the best possible means, for example, group chat or via notecards.
All Group Members will have notecard and voting rights
Only the Group owners can invite other Mentor Group Owners.
The Mentor Council will be the nucleus that will discuss the best way for all Mentor Groups to progress.

I fully expect lively discussions, but at the end of the day it is what is best for new residents that should be the priority and how the various Mentor Groups conduct themselves.
I also envisage, that at some point gateways will need to sign some form of formal agreement, whereby they will commit to not poaching residents from each other, whilst at the same time come to an agreement that it is in the best interest of any new resident, to send said resident to the gateway that can best help them, particularly if there is a better understanding of the new resident's language capabilites.

I hope that this esteemed group of Mentor Group Owners can work together for the benefit of New Residents.
Cheers