By Ang Yiying

TEN-year-old Poomesha Neelameham has a new good friend in undergraduate Nurul Atirah Mahmuddin, 22.

Ms Atirah is a mentor to Poomesha under a programme called Grace, or GRoom-A-Child-to-Excel, which pairs girls aged five to 12 from low-income families with women who can be positive role models.

About once a week, Ms Atirah calls or meets her young charge to chat or to play games such as Scrabble. She also plans to help her in mathematics, science and English, and plans to take her to places of interest like the Night Safari.

Grace was started by the People's Association Women's Integration Network (WIN) Council, an umbrella body for the grassroots Women's Executive Committees.

Launched yesterday, a week ahead of International Women's Day, Grace has 52 women mentors in their 20s to their 50s from fields as diverse as advertising, engineering and teaching.

They will play mentor for at least two years to 20 girls from families with monthly incomes of $1,800 or less.

Ms Atirah has made a difference in the two months she has been Poomesha's mentor.

The girl's mother, Ms A. Muniyamma, 41, said of the youngest of her three children: 'She used to be very moody. Now, she is more lively. She talks about the programme, and she waits eagerly for the activities.'

Poomesha has also become motivated to work harder in school, she added. Ms Muniyamma is a dialysis patient, and her husband brings home about $1,000 a month for the family.

Ms Atirah said of her charge: 'I don't want her to think she can't do things because she comes from a needy family.'

Indeed, the mentorship programme wants to ensure that the girls are not disadvantaged by their family backgrounds, said Dr Amy Khor, the adviser to the WIN Council.

Under Grace, the girls get tutoring, are enrolled in enrichment activities and, if needed, given up to $500 a year.

WIN Council chairman Joanna Portilla, a mentor to two girls, said: 'There are certain points in their lives that are quite critical, so we want to shape and mould them early in the right direction.'

WIN aims to involve all its 104 Women's Executive Committees in Grace, and build up a pool of more than 200 mentors in two years.

In his speech to launch Grace yesterday, Education Minister Ng Eng Hen gave a thumbnail sketch of the long way women's grassroots groups have come: He noted that when Women's Executive Committees were formed about 40 years ago, women were mostly homemakers.

Today, more than a third of their members - 36 per cent - are professionals, managers, executives and technicians, up from 27 per cent a decade ago.

The programmes in these groups have thus evolved and are 'becoming a focal point to galvanise women into action for a range of social issues which include community bonding, nurturing the young and helping the less fortunate'.

This article was first published in The Straits Times