We are delighted to welcome SCCUL amongst our valued customers and honoured that they have chosen us to help them develop an interactive mentoring system based on Moodle to support the Bizmentors Mentorship Programme.
Bizmentors is a free mentorship programme, run by SCCUL Enterprise Centre, for business owners and start-up / emerging businesses, social enterprises and community groups. It aims to provide free access to business expertise and wisdom to people in businesses, social enterprises and community groups who may otherwise have difficulty accessing such expertise.
This programme is part of a recently launched European-wide project which sees five EU regions come together to create a transnational business mentoring solution. The initiative is a three-year project co-funded by the EU Interreg Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme (NPA). Participating partners are from Ireland, Finland, Iceland, and Northern Ireland.
While an established mentoring support system exists in all the partner regions, many fail to meet the criteria to qualify for mentoring support, the mentors lack a working knowledge of specific areas of expertise or the funding model is unsustainable. The Bizmentors model, developed by SCCUL Enterprises, has been proven to support individuals and businesses in a small dispersed community setting in Galway since 2012. It relies on the local support of established businesspeople (Mentors) to provide free guidance to those seeking it (Mentees) in a structured and low-cost way. In a quadruple helix partnership approach, this project aims to innovate the model using an online interactive system and shared learning to scale and expand Bizmentors in the NPA Region, making expertise accessible to all enterprises and entrepreneurs. This is why SCCUL called on our expertise to implement a new mentoring system based on Moodle.
To test the new model, the partnership will focus on the Agri-Food sector.and will help support end-users to take advantage of the unique natural capital, innovation capacity and markets that remain untapped in the region. The mentoring model developed will be piloted in each region participating in the project. The output from these pilots will inform future transferability to other business sectors and countries (not just in the NPA region).
The online system based on Moodle and which has been developed and deployed by Enovation will interface with both the Mentor and Mentee providing easy online access to manage the application, input data, perform matching and analyze outcomes.
If you have questions regarding this project and how we can facilitate you please contact us at [email protected]