Mentor's mother, Yvonne, is the real rock star of African netball. The energetic coach and sports administrator is on a mission to help bridge the under-resourced nations by providing players from remote regions with uniforms, training gear and athletic equipment.
Many of the smaller nations competing at the World Cup will be returning home with extra boxes of uniforms and training gear to disperse among their netball communities, thanks to the efforts of Yvonne.
After putting out a call through netball networks and social media asking for donations of old uniforms Yvonne was flooded with offers of help.
Boxes of kit were couriered to Melbourne from Queensland, and people drove hours to make sure gear reached Yvonne.
She rounded up about 30 large kit bags full of gear to divvy up among mainly African nations, but also the likes of Fiji and Samoa.
She then loaded up a large van and drove from her daughter's Melbourne base, where much of the gear was in storage, to Sydney.
Again, she put the call out through the netball community to find places to stay along the way. For Yvonne, it was no hardship.
"It was a lovely road trip, I got the chance to meet so many different people," she says.
The idea for the initiative came about during an 18-month stint working in Zambia as a volunteer for the country's Special Olympics organisation.
"Through the process of meeting all the people around the provinces, I just saw an opportunity - it wasn't just netball - to collect equipment and sports gear. I know what I'm like, I have lots of sports gear in the cupboard that I never use, so when I went back to the UK I asked for donations and collected a whole lot of gear to take back."
Yvonne bought an off-road vehicle in Britain and shipped it to Africa in a container, with all the sports gear she had rustled up from various sporting contacts.
She then drove across Zambia into the provinces dispersing it out.
"In the process of driving around, I saw a lot of netball happening," she said. "I'm not really into netball - it's only really through Geva - but my thought was this was a real female social happening out here. It's getting them away from some of the hardships in life that they have.
"I just got the feeling I could do a lot with netball. You see them playing matches and they haven't got matching kit, and what kit they have got they're rushing off court to make a sub and swapping over. If they've got shoes they're doing well. Most of them wear socks, because there are all these burrs and things in the ground."
So, while visiting her daughter in Melbourne before last year's ANZ Championship final, Yvonne called the local netball associations to donate any old uniforms they might have, taking as much back to Zambia as she could.
The rest remained in storage until she could arrange a more large-scale operation to coincide with the World Cup.
"I really felt indebted to these people and I wanted to make sure all the stuff they had donated would be reaching players who would really appreciate it," she said.
"What I like about it is it is women helping out other women around the world."
With three African sides featuring in the top eight of this year's World Cup in Sydney, Yvonne said it was clear there was a lot of talent in the region and if the countries' programmes were better resourced, they could challenge the top four nations.
New Zealand will meet Uganda, the surprise package of the tournament, in their final qualification round match tonight.
