MENTOR CAPACITY BUILDING PROGRAM AND HANDBOOK
RestART Europe Project proudly presents project result 3 (PR4): Handbook for the RestART Mentors Toolkit
PR4 is composed of an online capacity-building program for mentors featuring a variety of courses on different topics (identified through the Analysis performed in PR1) and a comprehensive Handbook to teach and train the mentors on how to use the Toolkit (PR3)
The need for the Handbook and capacity building program is justified in the required onboarding and upskilling of the target group before using the Toolkit.
NEXT STEPS
The Online Mentor Training Program is needed to
- strengthening the basis of mentor programs for restarting women entrepreneurs
- provide skills and tools necessary to assess, strategize and act upon long term success in restarting women entrepreneurs, who seek to undertake a business in arts and creative industries, after a failure.
We hereby acknowledge mentors’ diversity as each mentor has certain strengths, but also areas for improvement. While one mentor might have a lot of experience in the arts and creative sector and the entrepreneurial process, this mentor might lack skills on how to foster confidence in mentees. Another mentor might have psychological knowledge that provides the right support for restarting women entrepreneurs but lacks business knowledge. By acknowledging these differences, we aim to provide opportunities for mentors to enhance their skills and, as a result, to improve mentoring support to the specific target group.
Target group
The general design of the program follows a collaborative approach that will enable mentors to learn online and interacting with peers, which will foster social negotiation and group learning, next to knowledge acquisition through online material.
The main target group includes all potential mentors, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial graduate students from project partners universities, company leaders, and their representatives, who wish to offer their knowledge as mentors but need to enhance their skills.
Solution
The solution to address the need and positively impact the target group is to develop an online mentor training program that aims the creation of diverse online courses, in specific topics, which will be established according to foundational knowledge, European relevance, and status quo of restarting women entrepreneurs (PR1).
The first PR4 deliverable will take the form of a Handbook, containing all the guides and instructions relevant to understand the optimal way to use the Toolkit (PR3). It will also be freely available on the project’s website and on the online platform Ment-Net.
The second deliverable will be the Online Mentor Training Program, where mentors can find a variety of online courses that can be chosen according to the mentors’ needs and interests.