Mentorship program for young professionals launched

VANCOUVER—A new program hoping to connect Catholic young adults with professional mentors and each other has just kicked off.

The Young Professionals Lounge, or YP Lounge, is an initiative of Catholic After Hours foundress Annabelle Chong.

“I could see there was a need for it,” said Chong, who has been putting on social and educational events for adults aged 25 to 39 since 2011. “Young professionals seek support when making big life decisions and they value having someone to walk along with them on their journey.”

While there are mentorship and career programs in Vancouver already, she said few focus on all aspects of life, including career, dating, marriage, and religion.

“For faith-filled people, the secular programs only go so far,” said Chong. “They would address the skills sets they might need, but they don’t address the holistic issues, like why should they be doing this, what are they made for, or what is their vocation?”

Enter YP Lounge, which will host monthly pub events as well as a mentorship program that will pair young adults with more seasoned professionals.

“Pro-life issues relating to dating, marriage, and family will be at the core of YP Lounge. They are the foundations to a flourishing and successful society.”

Far from hosting stuffy presentations, Chong hopes the pub events will be engaging, fun, and touch on universal principles, such as justice, goodness, or love. At the launch event April 25, two young adults held a friendly debate over which fictional movie or TV show – Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones – provides a better guide for young adults.

Young adults need something like the YP Lounge, according to Joseph San Jose, who works with students at Simon Fraser University through Catholic Christian Outreach.

The new program “is good at engaging the whole person, from our career lives, our work lives, and what it means to be a young Catholic in our world,” he said. “It’s a great thing for those who are in that space between graduating and starting a family.”

San Jose discussed the good-versus-evil struggle inherent in Game of Thrones at the launch event. His fellow panelist, who argued in favour of Lord of the Rings as a better model, was UBC student Douglas Pham.

“Young professionals should be talking about culture. Media is such a crazy way of experiencing the world. In many ways it’s unavoidable” and “characterizes a lot of how we see the world,” Pham said.

“It’s kind of like Ignatian spirituality: the things you dwell on kind of become who you are.”

Pham also believes social events and a new mentorship program with a focus on faith, career, and relationships is good news for young adults in the Lower Mainland.

“I find a lot of my friends, for example, have experienced struggles and hardships with transitioning from university to professional life, or even from high school to college, or between careers,” he said. “Transitioning is difficult when there is no one to assist you in that change.”

He said young Catholics need mentors as they need spiritual directors.

“In spiritual direction, you have someone else’s genuine, sobre second thought. In the same way, someone is able to mentor and guide you in your professional life. That’s attractive to a young professional.”

Future YP Lounge events will tackle topics including bioethics, artificial intelligence, and feminism. The next event, to be held May 7 at the Vancouver Art Gallery Café, will be titled “Are Men Under Seige?”

Chong said the mentorship part of the new program will launch in October.

For more information visit
https://www.facebook.com/TheYPLounge or
https://lifecollective.io/vancouver/get-involved/the-yp-lounge