Online Mentoring and Professional Peer Coaching Skills for Youth Training Erasmus Project

Project Title

Online Mentoring and Professional Peer Coaching Skills for Youth Training

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Gender equality / equal opportunities; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment

Project Summary

Students enrolled in higher education systems, volunteers, interns (internship participants) and young professionals at the beginning of their career (first two years of job experience) often claim their need for programmes and guidance to create the link between theory and practical work skills and competences, regardless of their nationality or area of work. However, young professionals declare and feel a stringent need to share ideas related to their working experiences, to receive practical guidance, to discuss their professional dilemmas with experienced professionals, as well as to get close supervision from them. The project approaches the mentorship as a relationship between an experienced professional who provides a role model, guidance and support for learners who make a career transition (in our case: insertion at a workplace or in a professional practice programme) for their professional induction and adjustment to organizational and work requirements. Professional peer-coaching is a process of mutual support and constructive criticism between two or more learners to acquire new skills and knowledge, representing a very effective form of collaborative learning at work.
Online MENTOR project addressed firstly youth trainers, teachers, practice mentors, youth workers and secondly youth over 18 in the process of becoming a professional or at the beginning of their career, students, volunteers, internship participants. The project was carried out transnationally with the participation of the partner organizations from 5 countries (RO, CZ, BG, SI, LT) to enforce the quality of the results and the exchange of best practices, as well as to foster the positive impact of the project at European level.
The specific objectives of Online MENTOR were:
a) to strengthen the connection between theoretical knowledge and practice in training, by producing curricula, contents and ICT materials and developing a flexible, widely usable and creative blended-learning training methodology designed for career guidance and for training mentors among young people over 18, at the beginning of their career;
b)to create a network of specialized trainers on mentorship and provide training to trainers, teachers, volunteer and internship participants supervisors for young trainees;
c) to develop professional competences and entrepreneurial skills of learners and young professionals through elaboration and dissemination of the professional peer coaching guidelines, but also through aspects related to entrepreneurship introduced in learning material;
d) to enhance tolerance, equality, gender balance, and social cohesion through best practice collection for gender balance and non-discrimination in career guidance.
The project activities resulted in elaborating: an innovative curricula on mentorship and career guidance designed to meet the EU requirements for transparency and recognition of skills, interactive and validated ICT and face to face materials for the on-line blended-learning mentorship and career guidance skills training course, an online platform for the blended-learning mentorship and career guidance skills training and piloted training course, guidelines for professional peer-coaching and a collection of best practices for gender balance and non-discrimination in career guidance.
A network of 23 multi-professional mentors was created contributing thus to the international and local piloting of the blended-learning mentorship and career guidance training. 266 young people were trained in the 5 partner countries. Guidelines in professional peer-coaching and best practice in gender balance and non-discrimination in career guidance were e highly disseminated among the target groups. 5 ONLINE MENTOR dissemination workshops were organized in each partner country with 282 participants in order to raise awareness on the benefits of mentoring and coaching for target groups, training providers, employers, authorities, such as efficiency at the work place, fewer mistakes on the job, cutting losses to the employer, client satisfaction, loyalty to the company, job satisfaction.
The project had an important impact on the mentorship and career guidance competences of the youth workers, teachers, trainers, mentors and young people in the 5 countries and at European level, on the awareness level of stakeholders concerning the benefits of introducing innovative ICT standardized mentorship training program at international level in the initial and continuous professional development of teachers, trainers and mentors in schools and work-based settings. The impact of overall project dissemination results is estimated at 23000 persons in the 5 countries.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 199183 Eur

Project Coordinator

Asociatia Everest & Country: RO

Project Partners

• Balkanplan
• Gender studies, o.p.s.
• STEP Institut, zavod za psihologijo dela in podjetnistvo
• SC Ludor Engineering SRL
• ASOCIACIJA KURYBINES ATEITIES IDEJOS