On September 24-25, the final event of the Mentoring Program 2.0 to strengthen advocacy capacity took place. For 8 months, 15 permanent civil society organizations mentored 15 newly established CSOs (mentees) from different parts of Ukraine. 

Their goal is to share experience in advocacy campaigns and help the mentee acquire skills in developing advocacy plans and decisions. 

The problems that our couples worked on are versatile – from creating master plans of communities to addressing the issue of social benefits, guarantees and compensation to children affected by hostilities and armed conflicts, from public space infrastructure to addressing the issue of cemetery overload.

See a journal describing the results by the link. 

93% (14 out of 15) of mentors noted the impact of the program on their immediate ability to be mentors.

MENTEES’ COMMENTS:

• First, the program combines very well the theory and its application in practice. Secondly, the architecture of working with the mentee is quite successful and allows (if desired) transfering knowledge from the mentor to the mentee and processing them (in particular, working on the implementation of the advocacy plan).
• It was a practical experience of sharing knowledge and mentoring for another organization. Having a lot of cases and experience is one thing, and the ability to share it is quite another.

The overall evaluation of the mentoring program by mentors is 9.4 out of 10.

MENTORS’ COMMENTS:

• Extensive experience of our mentor, practical advice, help with manuals, personal approach to each issue, systematic zoom meetings, consultations – all this was a good guide and support in the implementation of our advocacy plan. We are very grateful to the mentor for their fruitful work and constant help.
• The mentor impressed us because he did not help us to implement an advocacy campaign (this would be the easiest method), but encouraged us to take the right steps, etc. (as they say “instead of giving a fish, he taught us to catch it”). This method is the best example of cooperation with a mentor.

“Almost all mentees started to implement their advocacy plans, some (4 organizations) attracted additional funding for the implementation of plans and actions. For the mentees, this program is an impetus to action and an opportunity to feel their importance and support, for mentors it means new challenges and going outside their box, and therefore learning something new,” Olena Matviichuk, Mentoring Program Coordinator.

Mentoring Program 2.0 was created as part of the Project Ukraine Civil Society Sectoral Support Activity implemented by the Initiative Center to Support Social Action “Ednannia” in partnership with the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research (UCIPR) and Centre for Democracy and Rule of Law (CEDEM) with the sincere support of the American people through United States Agency for International Development.