Greece is the country where mentoring was born in ancient times, yet mentoring is not clearly understood by everyone today. Although attracting mentors in Greece is a breeze, attracting mentees for the MAB Project is likely to become a challenge.
Our Greek MAB partner 50plus Hellas has long been looking at ways to meet the overall requirements of the MAB project in terms of attracting mentors and mentees. So far, they have identified about 15 people within 50plus Hellas who are qualified and willing to register as mentors plus an organization that wants to become a second hub in Greece. However, attracting mentees will be a little more challenging than it looks.
Hellas 50+ started early on looking for organisations that deal with education and tutoring and recently approached a Ukrainian women's club in Athens who are interested in becoming a registered hub along with other similar groups in 5 other cities in Greece. They were very interested in what MAB is doing and will hopefully encourage some of their members' younger relatives to sign up as mentees.
We emphasize our contacts with this particular group because we know that Ukrainian groups of this kind should be even bigger in Poland, Germany and Hungary and can be approached by our partners in their countries to secure mentee contributions.
50plus Hellas plans to further reach out to Vocational Education, Training, Lifelong Learning Centers and youth representatives. Our partner will also reach out to women's associations because we believe that young women in particular are still struggling even today to have a successful career and seek guidance in a working environment that is predominantly male-dominated and therefore highly competitive and that they have the most to gain from a mentoring programme such as MAB.
