Students: be role models for others!

Student-mentoring, an important tool for social inclusion in Higher Education

“Mentoring touches eternity,

you never know when the impact ends”

B. Bijvoets

This is a motto used by mentoring programmes in Europe and it explains the desired impact of the project Mentor Your Future: by becoming mentors and role-models for others, students contribute to equal opportunities for young people. The value of mentoring goes beyond the effect on one mentee; it touches other young people’s lives in the mentees’ network. In the long run, mentees become a new group of role models.

Mentor Your Future will increase the chance to be successful in Higher Education for new students from all backgrounds, thanks to a common European methodology on student mentoring. Mentor your Future will make HE students and staff recognize that mentoring is an answer to social inclusion in Higher Education and will empower them to guide future students along the way. The project equips universities with mentoring as a tool for inclusive education.

The objectives of Mentor your Future:

HE students become aware of their role and the privileged position they have reached in education already; university students will recognize the responsibility to become a role models for other young people who struggle.

Higher Education students recognize the importance of mentoring activities for their personal and professional leadership and develop their soft skills during their experience as student mentors.

Higher Education staff, teachers and policy makers will understand the need for mentoring activities within educational, as a tool for development and inclusivity of new HE students. HE staff will develop competences to implement student mentoring in HEI.

For whom?

Students

Current and new Higher Education students can both actively contribute by being part of the focusgroups, learning weeks and testing-events. Current students will develop important soft skills by being a student mentor and new students will get answers and support during their path in higher education.

Staff

Lecturers and staff members in Higher Education can contribute to a new training course for student-mentoring, focusing on development of soft skills by joining focus groups, pilots and events.

Policy makers

Policy makers in education, both on educational and governmental level, can learn about the powerful instrument of student-mentoring and can contribute in implementing this in curricula and programmes. Policy makers can join focus groups and events.

Introduction to Mentoring in Higher Education Institutions for Policymakers in Spain

31 August 2021/0 Comments/in Impact Days/by Carina García

On the 5th of March, the Spanish partner Coordinadora de Mentoria Social organized a session on mentoring in universities and the European project Mentor Your Future. The session was meant for Policy Makers. The objective of the meeting was to present mentoring within the framework of higher education institutions. To do so, we made a […]