During the first RISE cycle, mentors were a precious addition to the training of our entrepreneurs. Providing professional insight, witty observations, and a trained exterior eye, the mentors helped them see clearer in their ambitions, their motivations and get some pragmatic advice, thus helping them assess the feasibility and direction of their projects. We are looking for purpose-driven mentors, proficient in a field related to business development, sustainability, entrepreneurship, communication, or marketing. However, if your qualifications are outside of this realm but still correspond to one of the projects of our entrepreneurs, please apply!
What is the RISE journey?
The RISE (Regional Incubator for Social Entrepreneurs) project believes that the youth of the Western Balkans are talented, full of innovative ideas, and eager to achieve them. That’s why we want to support social business ideas that will make the region a better place. RISE focuses on cooperation, ideas exchange, and peer learning. We believe that when you bring youth together, we can learn, grow, and make a change.
RISE supports young change-makers in developing their impactful ideas into sustainable social businesses. Our tailor-made support program, RISE Journey, is being implemented by 6 Local incubators from different parts of the Western Balkan region, who are promoting innovative social projects and project leaders. A blend of workshops, training, and cross-cultural events makes up the three steps of the RISE Journey: selection, ideation phase, an incubation phase.
Your role as a mentor will be to provide a bit of your time during at least the first four months of the program, to one of the teams participating in the RISE Journey.
Why take on a mentorship role?
Mentoring is a gratifying experience for leaders who can benefit from this relationship with the refinement of their interpersonal and critical skills. It also demonstrates and nurtures the self-confidence they have in their professional abilities and the richness of their soft skills – which are developed enough for them to want to build others up.
By joining us, you will be contributing to the development of an inclusive and sustainable economy in the region. RISE is building a strong ecosystem of local changemakers and organizations all across the Western Balkans, that you will have access to when you participate in the RISE journey.
This ecosystem will help you expand your network and portfolio, as our partners routinely appeal to experts on their day-to-day training and work. It will also ground your participation in the long-awaited development of social entrepreneurship in the region, which is bound to evolve greatly in the years to come thanks to foreign support and local political initiatives.
What does being a RISE mentor entail?
You will have to provide a minimum of 2 hours of your time per month. You are free to decide with your mentee when in the month those 2 hours of the meeting should take place. You will also need to be available by email, within the limits of reasonable demands.
The mentorship will last for four months, hence you will have to provide a minimum of 8 hours in this span. However, if the relationship goes well and you wish to be more present for your mentee, you will be free to provide more hours. We encourage mentors and mentees to end develop a longer-term relationship.
You will be expected to provide your feedback, opinions, and points of view that complement those of the support manager from “name of the incubator”. You will be free to define the frame of your meetings with the mentee – provided they stay within the frame of a mentorship. The subject of the meetings will be defined by the mentee’s needs and your own experience. Your role will come alongside the support manager coordinating the RISE Journey, to provide support by working specifically on one or more of the mentee entrepreneur’s challenges.
The relationship you will have with your mentee is autonomous from the support manager.
Mentorship with RISE is a pro-bono activity.
The mentor should:
- Allows the mentee to break the isolation often experienced by the entrepreneur
- Provides distancing and thus promotes a more objective approach
- Listens and asks questions to help identify and understand issues
- Accompanies in the identification of possible solutions
- Guide in the choice and application of these solutions
- Encouragement and dynamism
- Shares his critical sense
- Helps to take stock of past performance and attitudes
- Respects the confidentiality of exchanges
- Valuing the talent and potential of the mentee
The mentor should not:
- Support the mentee in the management of his business
- Act as a consultant or expert in marketing production, distribution, accounting, etc.
- Dictate to the mentee the decisions he or she must make
- Establish a business relationship (customer or supplier) with the mentee (or only after the mentoring program has ended)
- Request or offer a job to the mentee
Click HERE to apply!
