• FEM 2004-2007
  • Project information »
    • Action plans
    • Principles
    • Schedules
    • Best practices
    • Strategic working group
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  • Work packages »
    • WP 1
    • WP 2
    • WP 3
    • WP 4
    • WP 5
  • Entrepreneur presentations
  • Advisor and Mentor presentations
  • Studies of female entrepreneurship
  • Gender equality
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Project description

What is mentoring?

Mentoring is a method used for a long time. The term mentoring originates from Greece mythology. When Ulysses left for his journey he asked his friend Mentor to guide and help his son while he was away. In mentoring there is an exchange of knowledge and experiences between the younger, less experienced one and the older, more experienced one. It is realised in the discussions and important is not just to transfer the thoughts and ideas but make the partner (in most cases both partners) to think, react and understand her/his own way to live and work.

There is a family of methods which all have very similar goal – to help persons to use his/her capacity more fully, especially in the work life and so contribute to have a better life. The methods most widely used and aiming to the same goals are mentoring, coaching, sparring and work guiding.

The classical mentoring is done in pairs. Most often it was done e.g. in big organisations in the way that an older person took the younger one under his/her wings and in regular meeting slowly introduced him/her into the company traditions and ways of work.

Mentoring  in business life is not a new event. There has also been a lot of mentoring projects where the whole process as well as both partners have been supported and guided in order to make it succeed. One example of mentoring project developers is Women’s Enterprise Agency in Helsinki. They have developed models for women entrepreneurs in both pair and group mentoring.

Mentoring in FEM

In FEM there will be practised both pair mentoring and group mentoring. The speciality in FEM will be the wide use of group mentoring, in all participating countries. The Finnish group mentoring model will be used as a base and new models will be developed.

The mentoring projects are well planned, guided and followed. It has proved to be an important issue in order to reach the goals set in the beginning of the process. It is not a trivial matter who is your mentor or who are the other participants in the group. The overall organising and implementation from the start to the evaluation is taken care of by a coordinator. 

Group mentoring has the main role in FEM. There are two reasons why: - It is not always easy to find the right mentor for each mentee, especially in rural areas. – In group mentoring all the members in the group learn to act as mentors with each other; they learn to value their own abilities and knowledge when helping each other. 

   The Women’s Enterprise Agency

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