The Mentoring Across Border (MAB) project in which 50plus is participating as a partner for Greece, has given us the opportunity to develop some thoughts on mentoring.
The MAB is an ambitious project because it has two ambitious targets:
- To help Eastern and Southern European Countries develop the institution of mentoring.
- To examine how mentoring could function across borders within Europe.
MAB expects to train at least 120 mentors in the 9 countries involved and attract 120 mentees who will be encouraged to pair with these mentors beginning in 2024. No matter how difficult these targets of the ERASMUS+ financed project are, they are worth pursuing and determining their possibilities.
Meanwhile examining the situation of volunteer mentoring in Greece we determine that there is a misperception about what mentoring is and how it relates to coaching and education or other life-assisting social services. Avoiding lengthy definitions, suffice to say that a mentor is usually a person who has a successful career and has developed an honest wish to pass his experience to the next generation. Most important, however, is that along with any special knowledge of a particular subject, such a person possesses the soft skills that come with age, which can be the most useful to a person seeking advice and a trusted individual to use as a reference point.
We hope the MAB programme, besides its prescribed activities, will deal with the wider issues of mentoring and the involvement of senior experts in strengthening a better-balanced society and contributing to the welfare of ages in our country.
