Validation of mentoring project in favour of Human resources development

“Marie Curie” Association Bulgaria is honored to inform you about the transnational project “Validation of Mentoring” and especially of its first successful year. This project is financially supported by Leonardo da Vinci Programme of the European Commission. The partners involved are universities and NGOs from five European countries: Bulgaria, Greece, UK, Romania and Malta.

The project started on 1 October 2005 and will finish on 1 October 2007.

The main goal of that transnational initiative is to support the work carrier of the young disabled people and disadvantaged through incorporating and validation of the mentoring programs. The process of recognition by the organizations and institutions of the mentoring as a form of life long learning and method for obtaining practical skills is well known in the expert fields as process of “validation”. It suggests recognition of the practical skills acquired by participation in mentoring programs by certifying the participants with a legitimate document accepted by institutions and organizations on national and European level.

The project "Validation of Mentoring" aims at improving skills and competences of disabled (disadvantaged) people by establishing a mentoring system to provide work-based training at professional level.

Within the first year of the project the transantional team of experts in the field of life-long training, worked actively in order to set the basis for further work over the fulfillment of the goals.

In particular a New Mentor’s Guide containing the methodology and the basic steps of mentoring programmes was developed. The Guide gives detailed explanation of the essence of Mentoring, the roles, duties and responsibilities of the participants – mentors and mentees.

Other project product is an innovative DVD with best practice examples in the field of informal training for disabled and disadvantaged people. The focus in it is on mentoring programmes. The material on this interactive carrier follows out the final results of the implementation of these practices in some European countries.

Again within the first 12 months of the project started mentoring programmes in countries where they have never been put into practice before – Bulgaria, Romania and Slovenia. Meanwhile during the last few years Mentoring proved to be a key method for support of people with disabilities and for that reason the European institutions and other stakeholders carefully observe various initiatives for establishment of such mentoring programs, including the Validation of mentoring.

More detailed information about the project and its activities can be found on the official web site of the project www.mentoring-validation.org. The site is accessible for people with visual impairments with the usage of specialized software.