During our Partnership Meeting in Bulgaria, Our partner from Slovenia presented CEED as an example of their best practice regarding mentoring for startups. I find it very interesting. Check it out!
There are many mentorship programs and mentorship schemes available for entrepreneurs in Slovenia on many different levels (school kids, youngsters, women entrepreneurs, part – time entrepreneur…). Majority of this programs are high quality but has one major obstacle. Mentors in these programs are often public sector or public company employees or entrepreneurs with limited business success who are doing mentoring as a part of their business activities.
What is different in CEED Grow program? That all mentors in it are successful entrepreneur owning companies with several employees active both on domestic and international markets. These mentors can share their first hand experiences not only on how to start a business but also on how to grow, how to develop, how to lead employees and how to reach global markets. In CEED Grow program there are barely any lectures and workshops. The main aim of the program is to develop community that helps among each other with sharing sessions, supporting activities and providing inspiration for overcoming challenges and future learning and growth.
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
This program is running in Slovenia for almost 10 years now. Over these years more than 350 young entrepreneurs went through program, and some of them now become one of most successful and prominent entrepreneurs in Slovenia. Currently there are 54 mentors available for mentees of the program coming from best Slovenian companies and many of them were mentees of the program same years ago what is surely nice factor of success of the program.
More info: ceed-slovenia.org
