Unfortunately, those most in need of up-skilling are barely participating in continued learning at all. Non-formal second chance education for ESL is almost non-existent and adult participation in lifelong learning is negligible amongst the low skilled or unemployed. The lack of lifelong learning creates a low skills trap for the seventy million adults without upper secondary education attainment that are most in need of up-skilling. It´s well known that employers are reluctant to hire persons that involve high risk of drop-out, require consistent efforts in support (counselling) or require long learning curves to achieve acceptable performances. The MPATH project will create a mentoring model to help low skilled and long term unemployed workers to enter in the labour market and maintaining theirs job place. The project foresees the creation of mentor course targeting practitioners’, trainers’ and VET providers’. The project will identify the suitable profile and competencies to support or perform mentoring programs within small and medium companies and non-profit organisations (SME/O’s), including delivering it in working contexts. Mentoring is a competencies development based process, combining guidance, counselling and coaching process, which has been proven successful in terms of promoting excluded groups employability and social inclusion. It’s a way to promote and improve employees’ transversal skills using training and work-based methodologies, but also includes sustainable strategies to deliver these services: through courses (lifelong learning, high education modules or masters), internships and partnerships between NGO, social enterprises and private sector (to support counselling). The funding will be used to introduce innovations that increase efficiency and results of these actions. So the results will be easily embedded into the system delivering added value. We expect MPATH project to have a significant impact in the context of the labour market. First, on low skilled and long term unemployed (LTU) workers, which will receive training and gain new competencies and transversal skills during the training activities useful for everyday faced challenges. The impact of training activities will result in actions from which low skilled and long term unemployed workers will be the main beneficiaries - creation of labour integration paths and competencies to maintaining theirs job place. Mentoring model is also a way to companies promote employee development. Mentoring programs is a workplace oriented learning process (for mentees) but also an intended employee’s career development as the relationship between the mentee and the mentor is a strategic investment, by an organization, in the personal development of its organizational members. That can be called a win-win situation, because it covers the career interests of the mentees, the mentoring plan of the mentors and, the intention of the organization to make better use of the human potentials of its employees. Mentors therefore help integration, the preservation of the workplaces, thus improving the job-preservation capabilities of the given companies. For the employers, lower fluctuation rates mean smaller training costs. In each country will be organized a 2 national seminars, validation workshops to engage experts and key stakeholders in providing inputs to projects different outputs. Participants, organizations, civil society in general and decision makers will be informed regularly about project results and outputs - dissemination strategy. So locally the desire impact will be ownership. Mentoring could significantly contribute in promoting the smart, sustainable and inclusive priorities of the Europe 2020, by enhancing the performance of education systems and contributing to decrease of 1st job seekers and long term unemployed (LTU) job place retention. The percentage of ESL (one in seven young people leave education and training too early) which normally become LTU and those low skilled adults which left school at early stages are the groups with the highest unemployment rate. MPATH foresees the piloting of cascade mentoring paths, from mentors coordinators, passing by mentors and closing with mentees in the already stated situation. We aim to deliver a mentoring kit that can be used both by SME's and SMO's (non profit)
The Mentoring Pathways Towards Employment project (MPATH) project was a 2-year project (2015-2017) funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union and established a partnership of 6 non-profit organisations from across Europe, focusing on creating a mentoring model to help 1st job seekers, low skilled and long term unemployed workers to enter in the labour market and maintain theirs job place. MPATH project had the following goals: 1. To develop new, innovative and multidisciplinary approaches to teaching and learning in context of career guidance in labour market 2. To identify the suitable profile and competencies to support or perform mentoring programs within companies 3. To create a Mentoring model to improve competencies, namely with low skilled and long term unemployed workers, to enter in the labour market and to maintain their job place; 4. To pilot a mentoring model to support small and medium companies and non-profit organisations (SME/O’s) For accomplishing of them, 8 intellectual outputs were developed in order to create a package of tools and guidelines to support SME/Os to implement a mentoring model that can be seen in 5 languages: English, Romanian, Portuguese, Greek, and Hungarian, all of them uploaded on https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/projects/: 1. Evidence review on labour market and job place retention measures: a desk research study intended to identify good practices and active measures using mentoring to retain long term unemployed; this study was presented in different conferences and shared with stakeholders among SME/Os across Europe 2. Mentoring Coordinators and Mentors’ profile and competences tool: based on previous findings of MOMIE and MEGAN project was created a profile framework on the competences that coordinators and mentors must have in order to perform their role successfully; an online tool was created to support the use of the framework and all partners tested it during some staff training events with mentors and coordinators. 3. Mentees’ performance profile and competences tool: based on the new skills needed for the future jobs and the main employability skills, a profile of mentees was created alongside with an online tool. 4. Low skilled and long term unemployed mentoring model: to support the homogeneity and robustness of the mentoring programmes implemented, a mentoring model was created including a process map, some guidelines and procedures for all the steps, and a pack of templates to provide evidence on the mentoring process; all partners used the forms and they were satisfied with the model/ programme, although the experiences were very different in each country. 5. Course for Mentoring Coordinators: a training course for coordinators to prepare coordinators on basic skills about mentoring, how to implement a mentoring programme and how to support mentors; 6. Train the mentors’ course: the course for mentors followed the line as for the coordinators; most mentors felt that it was important to cover the theoretical information, but add the practical part and group activities; partners took the opportunity of staff training events to share some activities and show how to promote mentors’ skills 7. E-learning Training Course: to promote digital learning, the partnership used an e-learning course based on a LMS platform; due to lack of funding it’s mainly a repository of information, but partners felt it was positive to have a common accessible point; all partners used a LMS Guide with basic instructions on how to use the platform 8. Mentoring model to support SME/O’s workers’ retention: As the final output, the partnership proposed a guide/ manual to support SME/Os to implement a mentoring model; it was based on the mentoring model piloted, with added value of facts and figures from the partners’ experiences in MPATH MPATH set up in the application key performance indicators: • No of mentor's coordinators = 34/ Goal was 32 • No of mentors = 51/ Goal was 32 • No of mentees = 70/ Goal was 64 • No of Course for mentor's coordinators delivered = 5/ Goal was 4 • No of Train the mentors’ course delivered = 5/ Goal was 4 • No of mentoring processes = 50/ although it supposed to be the same number as mentees, A positive outcome of the project is the awareness of SME/Os, managers and HR about mentoring as a strategy to retain a job place, to promote employees’ satisfaction or to promote well-being among newly comers. Besides that, it was also important on the side of mentees, on the development of soft skills such as self-esteem or self-confidence. All partners got to embed the outputs and the package of tools into their own services and the multiplier events served to increase each partners’ network of stakeholders interested in using mentoring to support job place access and retention. Although the precise effects might come later, some partners have already been engaged with some SME/Os willing to implement MPATH mentoring model.