Sessions 3 Abstracts

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Session 3.1: Which Features of Mentors are Suitable or Desirable in Order to Establish Fruitful Relationships Between Mentor and Mentee?

Session proposed by: Margriet Lenkens & Loïs Schenk, Erasmus Youth Lab, Netherlands

2. What is your major starting question?

For this session, we plan to focus on the question of which features of mentors are suitable or desirable in order to establish fruitful relationships between mentor and mentee. Findings of our recent qualitative study on at-risk youths’ experiences with and beliefs about receiving support underlined the importance of both perceived similarities and additional resources of support providers. Therefore, in relation to mentoring of at-risk adolescents, we would like to address two questions concerning mentor characteristics. First, we would like to discuss the potential role of shared life experience and perceived similarities between mentor and mentee. Second, we would like to focus on the social capital of mentors and in what way mentors can function as bridging contacts between different networks.

3. How do you plan the session? Which method will you use?

The session will consist of two parts. First, Margriet will give a short theoretical introduction on perceived ethnic/cultural similarity and experiential knowledge (max. 5 minutes). After this, a discussion with the participants will take place, on the importance of perceived similarity, the way in which a mentor can use his or her own experiences to support the mentee, and potential conditions under which this experiential knowledge can be used for the specific target group of high risk adolescents.

For the second part, Loïs will elaborate on the topic of social capital (max. 5 minutes) and again, a discussion will follow afterwards. This discussion will focus on the extent to which mentors can provide bridging social capital, how this can help adolescents, and for which types of mentees or problems this would be most beneficial or desirable.

We strive to ensure the session will be interactive by alternating presenting information and sharing experiences and thoughts of the participants. Furthermore, we are planning on using creative methods for discussion (e.g. online voting app, visual aids or a pyramid discussion).

4. What is the goal of the session?

The goal of the session is to have participants exchange practice-based experiences with certain mentor characteristics, and to gain their perspective on opportunities, limitations, and barriers of these characteristics for effective relationships with mentees. This information will allow us to move forward with our research project, and thereby contribute to the body of knowledge on ‘what’, and more specifically, ‘who works’ in mentoring interventions.

Session 3.2: Mentoring – International Cooperations and Funding Opportunities: Best Practice & Pitfalls

Session proposed by: Frank Hiddink and Erna van der Werff, Open Education Community and Learning Hub Friesland, Netherlands

They host two sessions (2x 45 minutes)

1. Who are we and to which institution do we belong?

The Open Education Community serves the needs of enthusiastic, dedicated teachers, trainers, students and other professionals in education with a community and sharing mind-set and an international orientation. It is a network passionate about advancing Open Education throughout Europe and beyond. The Open Education Community ensures innovative courses and practices do not end up on the shelf, but instead become widely used and get officially accredited and implemented in a sustainable way across Europe and beyond.

Learning Hub Friesland enables, drives and maximizes innovation in education in Friesland, the Netherlands. Learning Hub Friesland introduces pioneering approaches, methodologies and technologies. This includes also strategic planning of professional development for staff in line with individual needs and organisational objectives and increasing staffs capacity and professionalism to work at EU/international level. Educational materials developed by Learning Hub Friesland staff vary from curricula on student initiated company assignments and social entrepreneurial behaviour to ‘add on’ training programmes on internationalisation in entrepreneurship education.

2. What is our major hypothesis?

Frank and Erna share a history of almost 10 years in internationalisation of education, arranging funding for innovative practices and managing transfer of knowledge and cooperation between international partners. From 2012 onwards, Frank and Erna have facilitated Mentor Programme Friesland to internationalise and to successfully transfer their programme to other schools in Europe. The resulting direct and indirect effects are by now widespread and have led to various follow-up initiatives such as the European Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring and programs such as SESAME on social entrepreneurship (mentoring).

3. How do we plan the session?

Our first 45 minute session will focus on the added value of:

• Sharing & learning;
• Internationalisation and cooperation;
• European funding;

In the first session we will highlight best practices and pitfalls regarding:

• international transfer of mentoring programmes;
• applying for funding;

In our second 45 minute session we will enable participants to:

• learn about the various funding options for mentoring initiatives in a short introduction;
• experience in a pressure cooker workshop how to hand in a successful funding application;

4. What is the goal of the session?

In our sessions we will adopt a direct style and will actively involve the audience, both during our introductions and presentations and afterwards. We will facilitate group discussions, Q&As and will organise a short pressure cooker work session in the second session to develop a European funding application on the spot!

The second session will be set up in a way people who did not attend the first session can fully take part without any (information gap) problem.

Session 3.3: Measuring Outcomes in Youth Mentoring Programmes: What Should Be Measured and How?

Session proposed by: Heide Busse, University of Bristol; DECIPHer, UK

1. Who are you and to which institution do you belong to?

My name is Heide Busse and I am a PhD student based in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom. I am working within the Public Health team at the University of Bristol and am part of the Centre for the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement (DECIPHer), who specialise in evaluating interventions such as mentoring.

My research focussed on the role of mentoring for young people in the United Kingdom and I am particularly interested to see how the effectiveness of mentoring programmes can be best measured and in the effectiveness of mentoring with regard to the health and wellbeing of young people.

2. What is your major starting question or hypothesis

The question I would like to discuss in the session is what outcomes should be measured as part of the evaluation of youth mentoring programmes and how this can be best done.

3. How do you plan the session? Which method will you use?

A short introduction will be given at the start of the session to get attendees to start thinking about outcome measures, what they would like to measure as outcomes of their programmes and how they might go about doing that. This includes a rationale for measuring outcomes in the first place, and an overview of what outcomes might want to be captured as part of youth mentoring programmes.

Novel findings from my PhD research will be shared with participants. In summary, my research found that what programmes measure and how they do this differs widely between different programmes and that hardly any programmes measured health outcomes of their mentees.

Following the short presentation, participants will then be asked to share their experiences and views. This 45-minute session is designed to be very interactive: participants will be asked to talk about this in small groups and then to share with the larger group what they have discussed. Participants that are involved in mentoring programmes will be asked to share their experiences and views on what they measure and how, including any difficulties or challenges that they encountered and how these could be overcome. Collectively, as a group, we will then start about easy and efficient ways in which programmes can measure the outcomes and how this can become routine practice within programmes.

4. What is the goal of the session?

The aim of the session is threefold:

• to help practitioners think about the evaluation of their programme and to consider what outcomes might feature in the evaluation of their specific mentoring programme(s)
• to obtain an overview of experiences and best practices across Europe
• to identify whether there is a need for training or workshops on outcome measurement

This session connects well with the overall summit theme of “the impact measurement of mentoring” and Clara Péron’s keynote presentation on Thursday morning. It will give participants of the European Mentoring Summit an opportunity to give voice to their experiences and views on this topic.

 

Session 3.4: Refugees and Migrants as Mentors: A New Way of Mentoring?

Session proposed by: Markus Cramer, Junior Consultant, Schulmentoren, Germany

1. Who are you and to which institution do you belong?

I work for Schulmentoren (School Mentors), a Hamburg-based project organised and carried out by the KWB, Coordination Center for Continuing Education and Employment, and the Hamburg Ministry of School and Vocational Training (BSB). It is funded by the European Social Found (ESF) and the City of Hamburg. Schulmentoren offers trainings, workshops and online modules for future mentors: parents, students aged 8 to 18 and other volunteers. I organise and carry out trainings for students, which enable the students to mentor their peers. The trainings range from how to get started in elementary school to how to pass through middle school to how to prepare for college.

2. What is your major starting question?

My major question “Refugees and migrants as mentors: A new way of mentoring?” aims to raise attention to the idea that more established refugees and migrants can be mentors for newly arrived refugees or migrants. Such migrant-to-migrant mentoring can empower more established migrants and give them an opportunity to share their experience. They have themselves faced many of the same obstacles that newly arrived migrants are encountering. The Geschwister-Scholl-Stadtteilschule in Hamburg is an inspiring example for migrant-to-migrant mentoring. More established immigrant students participated in one of our trainings before starting to help newly arrived immigrant students to tackle the challenge of getting used to a new school in a new country. But there are also important questions about migrant-to-migrant mentoring that must be addressed: How can the task of being a mentor actually empower migrants instead of being a (extra) burden? What are the characteristics that mentors need to fulfill? What are further obstacles when implementing migrant-to-migrant projects?

3. How do you plan the session? Which method will you use?

In the first part of the session I address the arguments and questions mentioned above and explain the example of the Geschwister-Scholl-Stadtteilschule (max. 10 minutes). Then I ask the group to participate in a discussion about migrant-to-migrant mentoring (about 10 minutes). In the following 20 minutes I invite everyone to share their own example of migrant-to-migrant mentoring and/or to develop new ideas in small groups. Each group gets a few minutes to give a small presentation on their ideas and examples. At the end of the session the discussion will be summarised and further prospects will be given (about 5 minutes).

4. What is the goal of the session?

There are two major goals that I hope to achieve. My first goal is to raise awareness of the possibility of migrantto-migrant mentoring. The second goal is to collect ideas for and examples of such mentoring and to discuss their strengths and weaknesses. 1 In the following the term migrant refers to everyone who moved from one country to another.

Session 3.5: Best Practice of Cooperation: Schools, School Ministries and Out-Of-School Organisations – enemies, rivals or partners? The Schulmentoren project as an extended kind of Private-Public Partnership (PPP+).

Session proposed by: Alexei Medvedev, School Development Programme Director & Mareike Dannies, Project Manager, Schulmentoren, Germany

1. Who are we and to which institution do we belong?

The Hamburg-based project Schulmentoren (School Mentors) – funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) and the City of Hamburg – is implemented by two institutions: the Hamburg Ministry of School and Vocational Training (BSB) as well as the Coordination Centre for Continuing Education and Employment (KWB), a Hamburg-based non-governmental agency specialized on implementation of projects for different target groups. Our project in a nutshell: The Schulmentoren project (since 2014) aims at development and implementation of mentoring schemes at 33 participating schools and neighborhoods. Project activities include acquisition and training units for parent-to-parent mentors, student-to-student mentors aged between 8 and 18, as well as adult volunteers as mentors for students.

2. What is your major starting question?

We are sure that this kind of private-public partnership (PPP+) school + ministry both as a co-donor and as a co-implementer + agency as a co-implementer is an innovative and promising model of cooperation and steering projects in the field of school development. Using this model, one may expect an easier acquisition of participating schools, a better acceptance of the project by school leaders and teams, more comparability and transparency of output and outcome, a better knowledge about transfer and networking possibilities, a better monitoring and feedback as well as a more flexible implementation. Nevertheless, this kind of PPP+ may contain some possible obstacles to be aware of (and to tackle!).

3. How do we plan the session? Which method will we use?

We will start with an input (max. 10 minutes) and present the steering and cooperation model of the Schulmentoren project in more detail by using the SWOT analysis. After a 5-minute Q & A round, we will open a discussion. We will use the fishbowl method and ask practitioners to share their experiences with different types of steering projects and cooperation models as well as to give a critical feedback on our model (about 20 minutes). Approx. 5 last minutes of the session will be dedicated to summarizing lessons learnt.

4. What is the goal of the session?

The main goal of the session is to share and to promote our very positive experience with the PPP+ model by emphasizing its strengths and opportunities as well as by indicating possible risks and weaknesses. Another goal may be to compare other possible models.

Session 3.6: How can technology/digital platftorm strengthen relationships in a Mentoring Programme?

Session proposed by: Sarah Przedpelska, Research Project Resiliency @ WorkOslo University Hospital, Norway

1. Who are you and to which institution do you belong?

We are a team from the research project Resiliency @ Work, an interdisciplinary project at Oslo University hospital in collaboration with the mentor organization Catalysts. Our aim is to improve school participation for youth in Norway, through mentor relationships strengthened by a digital platform.

2. What is your major starting question or hypothesis

How can technology/digital platforms strengthen relationship in a mentoring program? What are potential facilitators and barriers and how can they be addressed?

3. How do you plan the session? Which method will you use? (discussion; film presentation; short paper)

The session will be organized in the form of workshops during which we will apply methods from user-centered design to engage participants in creative thinking, and discussions and brainstorming of potential ideas and solutions. During the workshop we will interactively discuss themes related to how technology could be used during various stages in a mentoring process and how a digital platform can stimulate social inclusion in real life, from the mentor, mentee and program manager’s perspective. The stages are based on Elements of Effective Practices (Recruitment, Screening, Training, Matching and initiating, Monitoring and support, Closure). In addition to these stages, we would like to discuss the mentees potential user scenario before and after the program and how these past experiences might influence the use of a digital platform.

4. What is the goal of the session?

The goal of the session is to identify potential barriers and facilitating factors in the mentoring process and to generate a debate of potential solutions for the digital platform. We also wish to identify experiences from European mentor programs that would be strengthened by a digital solution and how we can think of the stages (mentioned above) in a new way. Additionally, we wish to empower program managers with the knowledge and opportunity to think of digital tools as something that can strengthen the mentoring relationship.

Session 3.7: Impact of a Mentoring Model Using Randomised Controlled Trial – Aproximar Case Study

Session proposed by: Tiago Cardoso Leitão, Aproximar, Portugal

1. Who are you and to which institution do you belong?

Aproximar (www.aproximar.pt) is a non-profit organisation aiming to enhance organisations’ social and human capital as a strategy to build their capacity to take advantage of challenges and opportunities raised by the external conditions and be sustainable. Aproximar develops, organizes and manages different consultancy and certified training programmes involving areas like mentoring, coaching, fundraising, quality management, social support, volunteering, and social innovation processes. Aproximar has a learning management system connecting training with technology in which self-assessments of performance are a key tool to support skills training. The programmes always combine social science (knowledge), active methods (people) and suitable tools (technology). It counts with 10 members providing voluntary work in fields of employment, evaluation, or education. Services benefit more than 120 practitioners, children, youngsters & more than 30 organisations. Aproximar develops projects related to mentoring models for the inclusion of vulnerable groups (roma, migrants, young people and NEET, women, long-term unemployed and (ex)offenders) since 2009. Aproximar has run three mentoring programmes reaching more than 150 mentors and mentees, targeting the development of personal and social competences and the access and retention of a job place. Nowadays, Aproximar is developing a mentoring programme specifically targeting Roma people and is delivering mentoring training to four different European countries within a mobility project (MDiv – Mentors’ Skills for Diversity).

2. What is your major starting question or hypothesis

Can mentoring processes’ results and outcomes in soft and hard skills be measured using Randomised Control Trial (RCT)?

3. How do you plan the session? Which method will you use? (discussion; film presentation; short paper)

We will present the Aproximar case study in the MEGAN project in using an experimental and a control group (RCT) approach to assess the progress of soft and hard outcomes during the mentoring process and after 6 months of the closure of mentoring relationships. RCT stands for randomised control trial and it involves «randomly assigning the group of potential mentees into either a ‘treatment’ (in receipt of mentoring) or ‘control’ (not in receipt of mentoring) group. The impact analysis involved measuring outcomes of the treatment group and a control group in order to determine the role of mentoring in achieving the stated outcomes. An RCT is the most robust form of impact analysis possible» (MEGAN Final Report, 2014). The method will be group work in which participants will synthesise challenges, constraints and other topic, followed by the case study presentation seeking to answer questions posed by the audience initially.

4. What is the goal of the session?

This workshop offers participants the opportunity to get acquainted with a real case study that allowed Aproximar to validate its mentoring model, get information about a practice-oriented methodologies to implement a RCT in mentoring programmes and to be aware of the challenges face by a transnational experience.

Session 3.8: Youth Initiated Mentoring with Arts-based Participatory Action Research Approach- Benefits and Challenges

Session proposed by: Tereza Brumovská, UNESCO Child & Family Research Centre, Ireland

1. Who are you and to which institution do you belong?

Tereza Brumovská, PhD. has background in social work and youth work with socially-disadvantaged children and young people. She recently finished a PhD. study in the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre at National University of Ireland, Galway with thesis entitled: Initial Motivation and its Impact on Quality and Dynamics in Formal Youth Mentoring Relationships: A Longitudinal Qualitative Study. She has published, taught and presented her work on youth mentoring since 2008.

2. What is your major starting question or hypothesis?

Not all formal mentors have positive autonomous (Ryan, Deci, 1985, 2000) motivations for volunteering with socially-disadvantaged children and young people in mentoring interventions but controlling motivations with ego-involvement (Ibid) are also often present among volunteers. Consequently, the quality of initial motivation impacts on the quality and dynamics of formal youth mentoring relationships they develop with mentees and mediates the risks associated with formal mentoring (Rhodes et al., 2009, Brumovská, 2017).

I argue that children and young people naturally sense the authentic motivations in the people who support them and who they can trust – the natural mentors. I suggest to develop the youth initiated mentoring project with the arts-based PAR approach. The project will facilitate skills of socially-disadvantaged children and young people to identify and explore their natural mentors, the relationships with them, and the forms of supports they receive in the relationships. Thus, they can strengthen the mentoring relationships and their benefits naturally. The risks associated with controlling quality of initial motivation of formal mentors will be reduced significantly (Brumovská, 2017, Rhodes et al., 2009). However, other risks arise with the nature of the PAR youth-initiated mentoring project.

3. How do you plan the session? Which method will you use?

In the session, I will make participants aware about their own natural mentors and then discuss the potential benefits and challenges associated with identifying, exploring and strengthening the natural mentoring relationships in the youth-led PAR mentoring project for socially-disadvantaged children and young people.

4. What is the goal of the session?

The session will outline the youth-led PAR mentoring project with its methodology and discuss its potential benefits and challenges for practice of youth mentoring interventions.

Session 3.9: Creating added value through mentoring: finding a balance between public service provision and citizenship involvement. The case of mentoring to work for immigrants

Session proposed by: Peter De Cuyper & Hanne Vandermeerschen, University of Leuven, Belgium

1. Who are you and to which institution do you belong?

Peter De Cuyper, Research Manager University of Leuven Hanne Vandermeerschen, Senior Researcher, University of Leuven Creating added value through mentoring: finding a balance between public service provision and citizenship involvement.

2. What is your major starting question or hypothesis?

The case of mentoring to work for immigrants in the labour market. While in many policy areas, social mentoring or buddy projects are relatively common, it can be considered as a new policy instrument in the field of labour market policy. Conducting an evaluation study of several mentorship programs to help immigrants find their way to/on the labour market study, some fundamental questions arose. They need to be addressed in this particular subfield of mentoring, but are highly relevant for other types of mentoring as well. In other words, in this workshop, mentoring for immigrants, in their way to, or to improve their position on, the labour market is our starting point, but we are eager to learn from experiences in other fields of mentoring. Labour market policy, and more particularly providing support in finding employment, is typically a field in which the government plays a strong role (through the public employment service). It is rather uncommon that citizens (volunteers) are involved within this policy field. This changes with mentoring.

3. How do you plan the session? Which method will you use?

Mentoring is introduced as a way to help immigrants find a job. The rationale behind the mentoring project is that the mentor can share his country-and-sector-specific knowledge and capital to support the mentee in finding an adequate job. In theory, a mentor should have the same professional background as the mentee. In practice, however, many programs evolve towards a less ‘rigorous’ matching, where mentees can also be matched with mentors with a more ‘general’ profile, working in HR for example, as sector-specific matching is very time consuming. In the case of mentoring to work for immigrants, their mentor provides support with writing a cv, applying for jobs, he/she shares the own network, boosts self-confidence, etc.

4. What is the goal of the session?

The main questions we want to address are: where does the role of the public employment agency stop, and where does the mentor come in? What are the consequences of the evolution towards reliance on citizens in such policy issues? Are there any pitfalls? One of the ‘arguments mentioned about mentoring is that it ensures tailormade support – but can this not be expected of the public employment service (or more generally, public service providers) as well? Drawing upon a recent evaluation study on mentoring to work for immigrants, conducted by HIVA (University of Leuven) we present some recent findings based on interviews and focus groups with mentees and coordinating organisations, to fuel the debate. We start with a short presentation, which is then followed with a discussion and an exchange of knowledge and experience between participants. We aim at a public of both policy makers & practitioners. The goal of this session is to reflect on the position of mentoring in service delivery, and to identify strategies to ensure that mentoring is an added value to already existing (public) provision.

Session 3.10: Youth Mentoring as a Form of Support for Children and Young People at Risk: Insights from Research and Practice

Session proposed by: Mary Lynch & Bernadine Brady, Big Brother Bog Sister and UNESCO Child & Family Research Centre, Ireland

2. What is your major starting question or hypothesis

Because youth mentoring is generally framed as a preventative intervention, it is often not considered as a viable option by social workers working with young people with higher levels of need. On the one hand, it can be argued that young people with challenging personal lives would benefit from the development of a positive relationship with a non-parental adult but on the other hand, the needs of the young person may be too complex for a volunteer to take on. Drawing on insights from research and practice, this session explores the issues relating to the suitability or appropriateness of youth mentoring as an intervention for young people with higher levels of need.

3. How do you plan the session? Which method will you use? (discussion; film presentation; short paper)

• Video showing participants experiences of the Irish Foróige BBBS Programme (3 minutes)
• Brief presentation of the issue / question / research evidence / relating to levels of need (5 minutes).
• Recommendations from practice based on the Irish Foróige BBBS Programme (5 minutes)

Group discussion in response to the following questions:

• Is mentoring more suited to being a preventative intervention or a protective intervention?
• Are young people with higher levels of need suited to matching with a volunteer?
• What practice considerations need to be taken into account when matching young people with higher levels of need?

4. What is the goal of the session?

The goal of the session is create awareness that mentoring can be a viable supportive intervention for young people with higher levels of need but that good practice guidelines should be followed to maximise outcomes for this target group of young people.