The mentoring methodology is defined based on women’s training and consists of mentoring guidelines, suggestions and interactive mentoring activities to be delivered to existing and would-be women e-entrepreneurs by experienced mentors through “peer mentoring” and Action Learning. Learning through questioning and mentoring is supported via self-reflection exercises and tools for facilitating the development of valuable soft skills of women e-entrepreneurs. Therefore, mentoring relationships focus on career development, personal growth and enhancement of knowledge, as well as self-esteem and self-efficacy towards labour competence (Dahlberg & Byars-Winston, 2019).
With this intention, the mentoring courses are implemented in the consortium countries and more specifically, in Finland, Lithuania, Greece, Italy, Cyprus and Spain. The main aim of the mentoring program is to help the mentees identify personal but also social barriers that prevent them from becoming e-entrepreneurs and guide them in “building” their e-business. To achieve this goal and go through the mentoring process successfully, the project consortium runs the mentoring program in groups of a maximum of five (5) adult women mentees, who meet for four (4) sessions with their mentor. A minimum of 10 women who want to start their e-business participate in the mentoring program in each project country, having a total of 60 women participating in all project countries. The mentoring methodology is piloted before the mentoring program is conducted in the project countries, in order to ensure that it is suitable and appropriate for mentors and women e-entrepreneurs and therefore, to finalize the mentoring process and quality content. The piloting phase enables the project members to fine-tune the mentoring program and make the necessary adjustments in order to achieve quality needs and work, and to also assess the appropriate tools and methods in mentoring women who want to be e-entrepreneurs (HR Works, 2021).
In addition to the above, the results from the mentoring courses are the basis for the development of the “Manual to become a mentor of e-entrepreneurship”. The Manual is available in all project countries’ national languages and it works as a road map, highlighting the necessary skills in training women e-entrepreneurs and developed with the support of mentors mentoring women e-entrepreneurs.
