WORKSHOP LED BY EWA ANNA JAGIELLO & MARTA BIALEK-GRACZYK

Ewa Anna Jagiello: Ethnographer, corporate anthropologist, qualitative researcher, PhD in ethnology, currently partner and CEO at Qualio Research Factory – a company specializing in social research and communication. Author and coordinator of numerous research projects as well as animation and training activities for companies, NGOs, institutions and academies. For the last two years she has worked as a researcher and evaluator of the intergenerational mentoring program Tandem 55+.

Marta Białek-Graczyk: Sociologist, author and tutor of social projects, graduate of Warsaw University with a twelve-year-old experience in incubation. Since 2003, she has supported the incubation of over 100 socio-cultural projects. Expert and adviser on social innovation and culture, member of the Social Culture Council at the President of the Capital City of Warsaw Warsaw. Scholarship holder Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Author of the publication “Cultural start-up – hints for incubators”. Originator and work supervisor and incubation methods in the program “Generator of Innovation. Support Networks” financed by the European Social Fund. Author of mentoring programs “Young culture managers” for young women, the “1 in 1 – Master and Student” program for young artists. Supervisor of the “Tandem. Mentoring 55+” program involving seniors as mentors in working with children.

ABSTRACT
The Association of the Creative Initiatives “e” is the leading organization operating in the area of senior citizens in Poland. “E” has supported the incubation of more than 500 social projects of innovators and active seniors in areas such as seniors’ civic and intergenerational activities, support for dependent elderly. Being aware of the huge capital of older people, and at the same time of many needs among children in Poland – we thought that we would like to design a mentoring pilot program connecting children with mentors – 55+.

There are practically no such programs in Poland. Therefore, we assumed that due to the experimental nature of the project – from the first idea to the last moment in the evaluation report – this work will be accompanied by in-depth research reflection. And here Ewa Jagiełło – an experienced qualitative researcher joined our team. And thus we started a joint dance – practitioners and researchers, as a result of which we tested a model of a mentoring program involving 55+ people as mentors of children with deficits.

During the presentation, we want to present the model and talk about how it was created in the process of mutual reinforcement of research and practice. We will show how we generated the data, how we subjected it to reflection and how subsequent stages of research influenced the formation of pilotage. We will present the methods and work tools used. At each stage of the model creation presentation, we would also like to interactively collect ideas / hints and questions from the meeting participants – what surprised them at this stage. Our goal is to share good practice and stimulate reflection on the role of research in creating mentoring programs.

1. Choice of partners – how we were looking for partners, how we selected them, how we conducted research in potential partner organizations to choose the best partner organizations working with children that are ready to take up the challenge.

2. Examination of the needs and motivation of mentors – potential program participants. How we searched and checked the motivations of potential participants – mentors.

3. How others do it – how we drew and processed the knowledge of the implementers of similar mentoring programs (USA, Germany, UK) in the areas of, inter alia, recruitment, ways of preparing mentors to work with children, cooperation with partners and implementation of security procedures.

4. Participatory modeling of intergenerational piloting – How, using a variety of perspectives in form, we designed the course of the pilot.

5. Research in action – we will show how we weave the research element into the implementation of the project and how we organized the work of the team of researchers, project implementing organizations, mentors – to constantly improve our activities.

6. Collecting knowledge, creating models and dissemination – we will show how we processed the collected knowledge to create an outline of a model of mentoring program that other organizations can use.