Mentora, a new programme for all young people to stay in education

• Fundació Bofill is promoting MENTORA, a new educational mentoring programme to support young people between 14 and 18 years of age in the stages of their educational transition.
• School dropout is one of the major social and educational challenges we face in Catalonia, and mentoring programmes help young people to stay in education, thereby helping to mitigate inequalities in education.
• Would you like to be a local supporter of MENTORA in your area and find out the potential that mentoring has to offer in reducing dropout? Town councils, schools, socio-educational organisations, etc., can all join!
• Registration is already open for an informative session or you can submit your candidacy directly before 31 May.

Barcelona, 3 March 2023

In Catalonia, one in every six young people drop out of education before completing upper secondary level or intermediate vocational training. In addition, many of these young people do so without completing their compulsory secondary education. To put this in perspective, in 2022 more than 97,000 people dropped out of the education system, enough to fill Barcelona football stadium or 3,200 classrooms.

The difference between staying in education or dropping out before finishing post-compulsory secondary level can severely impact young people’s access to opportunities for a fulfilling life. Staying in education equates to access to better personal and professional opportunities; therefore, it is the key to a more egalitarian, democratic and cohesive society.

School dropout is one of the major challenges we face in Catalonia. It therefore requires action to be taken from all spheres and by all authorities in order to address it.

As many best practices in Catalonia have shown, mentoring can help to reduce the inequalities mentioned, providing students with educational and personal support in their educational transitions to secondary level. It can do this by mobilising civil society, local councils, secondary schools, social and educational organisations, etc.

MENTORA is an educational mentoring programme aimed at encouraging increasing numbers of young people to stay in education.

To achieve this, Fundació Bofill is promoting MENTORA, a new educational mentoring programme aimed at supplementing and strengthening efforts to support adolescents in the stages of their educational transition (particularly those between 14 and 18 years of age) in partnership with local councils, secondary schools, and social and educational organisations that will foster the programme in their local area.

MENTORA is an educational mentoring programme that can be delivered to students in each area – under the supervision of teams of professionals – thanks to selected and trained volunteers. The goal is to encourage more and more young people to choose to stay in education. This will be possible thanks to the support from people around them who will build on the function currently carried out by professionals and families, spending quality time with them, engaging in meaningful conversations and carrying out activities to benefit from the knowledge, abilities and help needed to move forward.

During a seminar, Fundació Bofill presented MENTORA to organisations, schools, local councils and educational agents who may wish to sign up to the proposal and promote the Mentora programme among young people and adolescents in their local area. The initiative has been designed on the basis of the knowledge and learning obtained through educational mentoring experiences to enable local teams to foster the initiative. Here you can stream the video of the presentation event:

Related: read the article Catalonia, a land of mentoring to enable educational transitions

Any teams wishing to sign up to promote Mentora for the coming academic year can register to attend an informative session or can submit their application to join directly before 31 May.

For further information, log on to the project website and sign up to MENTORA!