The power of volunteer mentoring

On December 5th, International Volunteer Day is celebrated, a great time to look back, evaluate the work done by Autoocupació in this field over recent years, and highlight the commitment of all the volunteers who make it possible and their impact on the beneficiary entrepreneurs. In 2013, Autoocupació launched a volunteer mentoring program in which business owners and executives shared their time and experience with young entrepreneurs to help them consolidate and grow their newly created businesses, based on the experience of Youth Business International. In 7 years, the program helped more than 2,000 entrepreneurs across 12 autonomous communities, achieving an 87% survival rate after 5 years, according to the impact study commissioned by Youth Business Spain from PwC. In April 2020, Autoocupació launched SOS Mentoring, an adaptation of this mentoring experience, to help the most vulnerable micro-enterprises cope with the crisis resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. In just 18 months, this new initiative has seen the participation of 724 business owners and executives as volunteers who have helped save more than 1,000 businesses and over 3,600 jobs in Catalonia. SOS Mentoring has received the “Barcelona mai s’atura” recognition from the City Council, the second prize for volunteering from the Generalitat de Catalunya, and is currently a finalist for the social innovation awards of the La Caixa Foundation.

The keys to success

What are the keys to the success of this volunteer mentoring program? Why has this initiative worked so well? Why has it adapted so easily to different contexts? The keys to the success of volunteer mentoring lie in its name. Thus, the first key is the voluntary nature of the people who act as mentors. The primary goal of their participation in the program is to help others, without expecting anything in return. This allows them to exercise the role of mentor with nothing to lose, helping them to commit without limits, beyond what they would do in an ordinary professional relationship, establishing a relationship of trust and a personal bond that exceeds their own expectations and those of the beneficiaries, and which often extends over time, even indefinitely. Contribution and helping others are among the keys to personal growth and happiness, and volunteering allows mentors to give the best of themselves, generating a direct impact on someone who, in a short time, goes from being a stranger to someone very close. The second key is the mentoring methodology itself. According to Professor Robert Garvey, mentoring is a relationship of learning and growth between two people that requires certain values such as trust, commitment, and emotional involvement, as well as certain skills for active listening, questioning approaches, posing new challenges, and offering ongoing support. It is these values and skills that differentiate mentoring from other types of professional interventions, such as training or consulting, enabling an authentic personal connection between participants that helps them grow personally and professionally. In this sense, there is no better experience than hearing a mentee talk about the relationship they have had with their mentor and the impact that mentoring has had, above all, on their personal and professional growth. It is clear that willingness and methodology alone do not produce any effect and that to take full advantage of the potential offered by volunteer mentoring, professional management of the program is required. This involves, among other things, a design based on proven effective experiences, firm leadership, a team of specialized professionals, a network of committed institutions, custom-developed technology, and a strategy focused on growth, quality, and impact. On International Volunteer Day, Autoocupació reaffirms its commitment to volunteer mentoring as a tool for social transformation and announces that in 2022 it will launch a new volunteer mentoring program to help young unemployed people define and achieve their professional goals, leading their lives so they can say out loud: “I am what I want to be”. If you would like to participate as volunteer mentors, please write to mentoring@autoocupacio.org. Thank you!