Walking the Journey

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Maureen Kangere on why giving an hour can change a life, including your own

Think about a moment when someone truly believed in you.

Not a polite compliment. Not a vague “You’ve got potential.” A real, specific, I-see-exactly-who-you-are-and-I’m-not-going-anywhere kind of belief.

If you’ve had that moment, you know what it does to you. It doesn’t just make you feel good. It changes how you see yourself. And once you see yourself differently, you start moving differently too.

Now imagine being the person who gives that to someone else.

That’s what Maureen Kangere does. Every single month.

“Mentorship creates safe spaces for growth, accountability, and empowerment. It is powerful for girls to know that there are people truly rooting for them.” Maureen Kangere, BelEve Mentor

Maureen Kangere: Gender Specialist · 18+ years advancing women’s leadership across Africa & globally
Capacity builder across 9 African countries · Global gender equality advocate

Founder, Anchored Faith  ·  BelEve Mentor

She has spent 18 years doing this work. She chose to do more.

Maureen Kangere’s career reads like a masterclass in commitment. Based in Uganda and working across the continent, she has spent over 18 years advancing women’s leadership, elevating women’s voices, and fighting to end violence against women and girls. She has built the capacity of activists in nine African countries. She has walked into global forums and made the case for gender equality at the highest levels.

She didn’t have to become a BelEve mentor. She was already doing the work.

She chose to anyway.

Because Maureen understands something that experience teaches you eventually: systems change, starting with people. And people change when someone walks alongside them, not ahead, not behind, but right there, at the same pace, for as long as it takes.

Right now, that person is Jasmine.

Through BelEve’s structured mentoring programme, Maureen is currently walking that journey with Jasmine, a young woman who is building clarity, confidence, and direction in her life. They meet monthly. They talk honestly. They work through the questions that don’t have easy answers: Who am I becoming? What do I actually want? How do I get there without losing myself on the way?

Those conversations don’t happen by accident. They happen because Maureen shows up prepared, present, and genuinely invested in Jasmine’s future.

Maureen’s approach weaves practical career guidance together with something harder to teach: the kind of self-belief that holds when things get difficult. She doesn’t just tell Jasmine what to do. She helps her figure out who she already is and why that’s more than enough to build from.

For Jasmine, that’s not a small thing. For a lot of girls, that one relationship is the difference between staying stuck and finally moving.

1. A safe space to think out loud

Monthly sessions where Jasmine can ask the difficult questions, sit with uncertainty, and think clearly without pressure or judgement.

2. Practical guidance from lived experience

Maureen draws on 18 years of navigating professional spaces as a woman to help Jasmine understand what’s actually ahead and how to move through it.

3. Belief, modelled and transferred

Not just telling Jasmine she can. Showing her what it looks like when a woman backs herself and refusing to let her settle for less than that.

4. Accountability that goes both ways

Real mentorship isn’t one-directional. Maureen holds Jasmine to her own goals, and in doing so, she keeps herself sharpened too.

The numbers say what the stories already know.

Maureen’s experience isn’t an anomaly. It’s what the research tells us happens, consistently, when young women have structured mentorship in their corner.

86% of girls report higher confidence with a mentor. Transition Mentorship Studies, 2022

Young women are 5× more likely to be promoted early in their careers when mentored. Mentorship Outcome Studies, 2022–23

+10% increase in college enrolment with structured support. Youth Mentoring Evaluations, 2023

These aren’t abstract outcomes. They are Jasmine’s story, still being written. They are the stories of every girl who found her mentor at exactly the right moment and didn’t have to figure it out alone.

Here’s what Give to Gain looks like in practice.

We talk about ‘Give to Gain’ as a principle. Maureen lives it as a practice.

She gives an hour a month. She gives attention, experience, honesty, and the kind of presence that most people are too busy to offer. She gives, in the truest sense, not because she has to but because she understands what it means to someone who doesn’t yet have what she has.

And what does she gain?

She gains the thing that no career achievement can replicate: the experience of watching a young woman step into her own power. Of knowing that her investment, her time, her knowledge, and her belief became the foundation that someone else built their life on.

That is not a soft return. That is a legacy.

Maureen Gives

• Her time one hour a month
• 18 years of lived experience
• Honest, practical guidance
• Genuine belief in Jasmine’s future
• A safe space to think and grow

⇄

Maureen Gains

• Purpose that extends her mission
• The reward of watching growth happen
• A sharpened perspective on her own work
• A relationship that goes both ways
• A legacy that outlasts any job title

Give Your Experience. Gain a Legacy.

Mentor. Become a BelEve mentor. Give an hour. Be the person who changes everything for a girl who’s ready to believe in herself. Become a BelEve Mentor. 

You don’t have to have all the answers. You just have to show up.

Maureen will tell you she doesn’t have a magic formula. She doesn’t arrive at every session with a perfect plan. What she brings is something simpler and more powerful than that: she shows up. Consistently. With full attention. Ready to listen before she speaks.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

Throughout March, we’re honouring the women who have walked this road before us and the mentors who are walking it right now, alongside the next generation. Maureen is one of them. And there are girls out there, right now, waiting for someone like you to be another.

Give an hour. Gain a legacy. That’s what BelEve is built on.

Give your experience.

You have more to offer than you realise. Register as a BelEve mentor and start walking alongside a girl who needs exactly what you have. Register as a Mentor

Invest in the pipeline.

Structured mentorship is infrastructure, not charity. Partner with BelEve to build the leadership pipeline where it matters most. Partner with BelEve

More stories like Maureen’s, all March long.

We’re honouring the women who paved the way and the mentors walking the road right now. Don’t miss a single story. Join the BelEve Community