Leeuwarden, Netherlands 18-20 May 2022
Mentoring represents a powerful means to guide both young and less young people towards ongoing development at all levels. It can build solid bridges between schools, social partners, businesses, and families, and it helps fostering inclusive eco-systems. Mentoring concerns with both the personal and professional or academic development of mentees.
The European Mentoring Summit is a biennial event that aims at connecting people and projects in the mentoring sector in order to establish connections and share research, best practices, and learning-bearing experiences of mentoring programmes across Europe. Every edition has a mentoring-related theme, special keynote speakers, and activities. This year’s summit topic concretely aims at going beyond the traditional distinction and compartments in mentoring and thus at ‘Linking Formal and Informal Mentoring in a Holistic Approach’.
By connecting the world of formal and informal mentoring, we can work together for the benefit of a more comprehensive development of mentees. This innovative approach to mentoring could be defined holistic on two dimensions. In the technical and methodological sense, it is so as formal and informal mentoring are brought together. In its narrower meaning, it is defined as such because it looks holistically at the person and aims at developing a mentoring experience fully tailored and centred on every aspect of the mentee’s life and their unique nature, challenges, and their own life opportunities and ambitions.
In our contemporary and fast-changing society is ever more complicated to distinguish compartmentalised areas of our life. And especially young people are now more than ever expected to work on their interpersonal competences and soft skills to succeed also in their professional and academic life. Hence, a mentoring experience that looks and considers the overall person of mentees is ever more necessary and beneficial. A great social value is indeed generated in addition the personal one. Mentees more holistically supported benefit from (I) a more consistent social and emotional consideration of their personality development, and (II) relevant bridges with parties and networks able to support the general development of mentees according to their specific needs and life goals.
We at Mentoring Europe have been interested in this topic for a while now and asked ourselves: what is the best environment to explore this innovative and ambitious topic if not the next Mentoring Summit where the exchange and flourishing of ideas from high quality mentoring programmes and esteemed figures of the European mentoring movement happens? The 2022 EUROPEAN MENTORING SUMMIT is the4th edition after those in Barcelona (2020), Berlin (2018) and Leeuwarden (2016). The 2022 Summit will be hosted in Leeuwarden (NL) again, by Mentoring Europe, in collaboration with International Affairs of NHL Stenden University.
We will be engaging with special workshops, roundtables, keynote speakers and more on Strategic collaborations facilitation so to share practices, experiences, practical considerations and activities to connect stakeholders and environments to embed mentoring as core element in society; Research and practice to develop methodologies to bring the different aspects of mentees’ life together throughout formal and natural mentoring in a person-centred experience; and Innovative practices to support the development of more holistic approaches to mentoring. If you would like to know more and see how you can take part or get involved visit mentoringsummit.eu or email us at community@mentoringeurope.eu.