WiLAT Sri Lanka celebrates fourth anniversary of ‘Ignite’ mentoring programme

Women in Logistics and Transport (WiLAT) Sri Lanka celebrated the fourth anniversary of its flagship mentoring programme on November 16th at The Kingsbury Hotel, Colombo.

‘Ignite’ is a planned mentoring programme where both mentors and mentees are selected after a careful evaluation. This year 11 mentors from the logistics, transport and supply chain industry, in both the corporate and academic fields pledged their support to mentor the 25 young undergraduates who were inducted to the mentoring programme 2017.

WiLAT Sri Lanka Advisor and Co-Founder and CILT Sri Lanka Vice Chairperson Gayani De Alwis, in her welcome addressed and enlightened the audience on the objective of the mentoring programme, ‘Ignite’. She stated: “Ignite was launched with the initiative of developing and supporting young professionals and undergraduates to harness their talents by providing learning and development opportunities.”

Lanka Century Investments PLC CS and HRM Vice President Major General Channa Goonetilleke was the Chief Guest for the event and Channa spoke of how important mentoring can be and related his military experience in how they have coached and mentored military personnel in all stages of their lives.

The Keynote Speaker for the event was CBL Foods International (Pvt.) Ltd Director/CEO Samitha Perera. Samitha emphasised on the supply chain industry and how mentoring becomes a key ingredient in connecting everyone together. His speech was followed by a very impactful video on the relationship of a mentor and mentee and how a mentor could support his/her mentee to reach greater heights.

The keynote speech was followed by a panel discussion and a Q&A session moderated by Gayani De Alwis and this was an interactive session, which gave audience an insight into the essence of mentoring and how to carry out an effective professional mentor-mentee relationship and make use of the valuable experiences and skills of one’s own mentor.

The audience was then entertained to a Bharatha dance performance. All mentors and mentees were then invited to light the official ‘Ignite’ oil lamp to join hands to pledge their commitment towards this initiative. ‘Ignite’ has received global recognition since the launch in 2014 and this year at the CILT International Convention held in Macau, WiLAT Sri Lanka’s beautifully conceptualised ‘Ignite’ mentoring programme won the poster competition at the global convention. To conclude the day’s proceedings Shakkya Perera from Ocean University, who was the scholarship winner at ‘Ignite’ 2016 shared her mentoring experience and her International exposure at the CILT Global Convention held in Macau in June 2017.

‘Ignite’ has been providing countless opportunities to young undergraduates and professionals and WiLAT urges all mentees inducted this year to reap from the opportunities they behold. WiLAT Sri Lanka is the women’s body of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) Sri Lanka and is growing from strength to strength ever since its formation in 2013.