Spotlight ON! Mentoring under Construction | 2020

Mentoring under Construction is community for mentoring practitioners within the European Solidarity Corps programme. It is also a process to build and develop this community. Mentoring under Construction aims at identifying, adapting and implementing good practices on mentoring within European Solidarity Corps programme.

Mentoring under Construction activities in 2021 can be found here: Moving ON! Mentoring under Construction

M Mentoring under Construction is all about building a strong, sustainable community around mentoring within the European Solidarity Corps programme.

This community is for mentors, including those, who just embark into this journey, project managers that are developing and implementing volunteering projects, coordinators of volunteers, facilitators of learning, authors and trainers that are developing tools and resources about mentoring, members of National Agency and SALTO Resource Centres, that support this process, … in short everyone who is interested in raising the quality in mentoring within European Solidarity Corps programme. This includes:

• building a common understanding of key concepts around the role of mentor: role, responsibilities, needed competences,
• developing personal and professional competence to keep up with the emerging challenges in the field of mentoring,
• sharing knowledge and good practices,
• building a vibrant network of people engaged in mentoring, ready to support one another, learn and develop.

Mentoring under Construction | The context

Mentoring under Construction | Our vision

Let’s jump forward into a nearer future… Imagine a vibrant, resourceful community of mentoring practitioners that support one another in identifying, adapting and implementing good practices in their daily work within European Solidarity Corps programme.

Mentoring under Construction is the process of building this community.

Mentoring under Construction | A short history

The idea for Mentoring under Construction goes back to 2019 and came into life in form of a residential event for March 2020 in Bucharest. Like many other events in the field of European Youth Work it was planned, postponed, and then cancelled due to the uncertain situation of you-know-who.

We moved on with Mentoring under Construction in September 2020. The residential event was transformed into a series of four online events which took place in November-December 2020. These four online MeetUPs aimed at:

• sharing experience on challenges and good practice examples of mentoring in European Solidarity Corps,
• exploring and understanding the needs of mentors and organisations and mapping resources for mentoring, and
• boost learning and development in terms of mentorship.

In 2021, we continue this series of online events with one-day intense workshops, MeetUPs and podcasts. This process – so we hope – will lead us to a residential event in Bucharest. Well, let’s see 🙂

Mentoring under Construction | The people

Back in late 2019, Romina Matei (European Solidarity Corps Resource Centre) together with Andrei Popescu (Romanian National Agency for European Solidarity Corps) started to envision a European community around mentoring in the European Solidarity Corps Programme. In the beginning of 2020, Andreea Buzec joined as facilitator to bring forward the residential event, and later in the year, I joined the team to support the transformation process into online events.

Now, in 2021, we enlarged out team: Mateja Crnekovic (Croatian NA), Edouard Porttefaix (French NA) and Oli Atlason (Icelandic NA) joined us as well as Andrei Dobre in the role of a community manager.

Spotlight ON! Mentoring under Construction | Online events in 2020

We took of with community building in late 2020. The four online events consisted of:

• A kick-off event (live streaming)
• Two virtual Open Space events
• A final community building event

Let’s have a look at each event one-by-one:

Spotlight ON! Kick-off Event

The kick-off event served as a space to share, explore and discuss questions related to mentoring, such as challenges, good practice, quality, tools & resources, etc. It aimed at mapping the landscape of mentoring within the European Solidarity Corps programme, which is the starting point of Mentoring under Construction, a process of further exploration and community building around mentoring.

The event was a live streaming with three guests, that had a conversation on mentoring touching on:

• What’s the character/essence of mentoring?
• What are challenges and good practise in mentoring?
• What support do mentors need?

Check out the recording of this event on facebook!

Spotlight ON! Open Space Events

The two virtual open space events offered a space to share, explore and discuss questions related to challenges and good practise around mentoring. They aimed at bringing together people who would like to work on the topic of mentoring within the European Solidarity Corps programme. Both times, the topics were suggested and discussed by participants:

• Volunteers in local community
• Volunteers free time / Volunteers socializing together
• Constructive feedback
• Conflicts between volunteers living together
• Quarantine and Pandemic situation
• Support volunteers with fewer opportunities / special needs
• Mental Health Problems
• Mentoring a group of volunteers

The main approach for this event was Open Space Technology adjusted to our needs and online purposes.

Spotlight ON! Community Building Event

After the kick-off event and two virtual open space events, where we explored the landscape of mentoring, it was time to create a first blueprint for the community. The community building event aimed at shaping this blueprint. Therefore we discussed the following questions:

The main approach for this event was the World Cafe.

Mentoring under Construction | Moving on in 2021!

In 2021 we would like to focus on the following points:

• open the process to new community members,
• strengthen members’ involvement and relevance of topics addressed and shared resources, and
• facilitate the transfer of responsibility for development and maintenance of the community towards the members.

Mentoring under Construction | Activities planned in 2021

• One day intense workshop, 17.05.2021
• MeetUPs: 01.06./15.06./29.06./13.07.2021 15.00 – 17.00 CET (stay tuned for announcement)
• Podcasts (in preparation!)
• One day intense workshop (in autumn)

MuC activities in 2021: Moving ON! Mentoring under Construction