MENTOR'S LAB
Start date: Aug 24, 2016,
End date: Mar 23, 2017
PROJECT
FINISHED
Mentors LAB project is organized in Vilnius (Lithuania) involving 25 youngsters from Italy, Ukraine, Croatia, Greece, Turkey, Moldova, Portugal, Spain, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania and Lithuania. The initiator of this project - Social action is organization that works with EVS projects for 10 years. Through these years they were trying different models of working with EVS volunteers and they have found that mentors role is really important in volunteering process. What they saw from their practice that some mentors have less experience or have not enough knowledge about mentoring because of the lack of learning possibilities. The main aim of the project is to create a space of learning in order to develop competencies of people, working with youth through mentoring.The objectives of the project:• Create multicultural space for learning, sharing experience and networking among mentors or people willing to be mentors. • Share experience, knowledge and practice different methods in order to enrich supporting youth with fewer opportunities through mentoring and implement quality of youth projects. • Our aim is to develop and acknowledge personal, social and professional competences of mentors in order to strengthen and motivate them. Big impact on participants, organizations is expected: Participants will improve personal, social and professional skills, such as social and civic, cultural awareness and expression, communication in foreign languages, learning to learn, sense of initiative and entrepreneurship, digital competences. Mentor’s competences (skills, knowledge, attitudes) will be developed and quality of work with youth with fewer opportunities will be improved. Also there will be ability to learn new working methods, experiencing non- formal learning, sharing ideas, getting new contacts (networking), increasing motivation and satisfaction of their work. It will be an impact on organizational level mostly with motivated and with recognized learning achievements employees, also it is expected to reach better quality of work with youth with fewer opportunities, bigger capacity to implement international projects and motivation to connect to mentors’ support network.Main methods included in this project:• Team/group building and analyzing group processes. • Explore Mentor’s behavior attitudes and working strategies in the main tasks of mentoring.• Simulating situations.• Concentration activities.• Mindmapping, painting and writing techniques.• Warm-ups techniques from Theater of Image.• Evaluation of the day by group reflection.• Involving international mentors’ community with communication on the internet. Participants from each partners’ organization will organize activity for local youth with fewer opportunities in order to promote possibilities of Erasmus+, especially of EVS. Information about the results of the project will be published in locals youth portals (such as www.zinauviska.lt), that have various target groups (youth, parents, youth workers). Other form of dissemination will be used also.