In the Kingdom of Volunteering:
The Mentors Journey

Εκδήλωση με θέμα τη διαχείριση εθελοντών με εστίαση 

στον ρόλο του Μέντορα 

OPEN EVENT IN POLITISTIKO ERGASTIRI AYION OMOLOGITON

 Αγχιάλου 1, Λευκωσία 1080

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Τρίτη 26 Οκτωβρίου 2021

Tuesday, the 26th of October 2021 (15:00-18:00 EEST)

“Join us in this open event to explore the role Mentors play for European Volunteers and to learn more about Volunteering projects under the ESC program.”

Offered Topics are:

• Open Discussion with Mentors from Europe –  to share and discover their practices in supporting volunteers
• Exploring & Testing Tools –  to facilitate the job of the Mentors
• The opportunity of getting to know organizational representatives of diverse Europe wide active organizations
• Learn more about Volunteering and Erasmus + Opportunities

OUR CONTEXT:

The Erasmus+ project “In the Kingdom of Volunteering: The Mentors Journey” is aimed to create an intensive learning and discovery experience in the mentoring process to actors affiliated with organizations that have hosted European volunteers, under the ESC program. 27 representatives of 10 hosting organizations have already taken part in an online training course in March 2021, where they discovered the theoretical elements around the mentoring process, identified challenges mentors face and the needs of the volunteers they support and they formulated working groups to explore mentoring topics further. They are now coming to Cyprus for a second training activity – a 5-day seminar where they will refine and finalize their work and discussions and will be ready to organize this open event to share what they have learned and deepen the debate on the important role of mentors, as well as test and discover concrete methods and tools that mentors can use. It will be a peer-learning activity that is meant to bring focus and different perspectives to Mentoring in ESC projects, to empower the mentor role and share good practices among partners to raise the quality and the awareness of the volunteering programs.

Why the focus on mentoring?

According to the ESC (European Solidarity Corps) program, volunteering is a solidarity activity that takes the form of a voluntary unpaid activity. ESC aims to promote solidarity as a value, mainly through volunteering, to enhance the engagement of young people and organizations in accessible and high quality solidarity activities, as a means to contribute to strengthening cohesion, solidarity, democracy and citizenship in Europe, while also responding to societal challenges and strengthening communities, with particular effort to promote social inclusion. In this scenario, Mentors are the ones most connected to the learning process volunteers go through in ESC, and become directly invested in it, alongside volunteers themselves, of course. Besides supporting their integration in the new community and culture, especially in the beginning of the project, Mentors’ key role is to guide and support the volunteer in the ESC learning journey, offering them the tools needed to reflect on their own learning experience and extract the competences acquired. But mentors are not all experienced and able Masters of learning, at least not from the beginning and they also need guidance, support and training to be ready to properly perform their assigned role. And in the Kingdom of Volunteering – this is what we worked for – supporting mentors to become more empowered in their role. Now they are ready to open the Kingdom for other to join!