The YSEI Mentoring program is structured to bring together youth entrepreneurs with professional business people who offer guidance, support and encouragement aimed at developing the competence, character, business skills and up-scaling of the social entrepreneur?s (the mentee) project.

The mentorship program consists of two primary types of mentors. High intensity local mentors (business coaches) and lower intensity distance mentors/coaches. The local mentoring provides business coaching, technical expertise and marketing assistance whilst the distance group helps ?fill in the knowledge gaps? and is on hand to offer advice in their areas of specialization. Mentorship program elements includes: business/project planning, training, coaching, project management, knowledge sharing activities, technical support and marketing consulting, monitoring and evaluation.

OrphanIT (Mentorship program lead) has successfully field-tested different styles of high intensity and lower intensity distance mentoring over the last three years with ICT enabled projects located in the Philippines, India, Kenya, Australia, and Bangladesh. The field-based mentor resides in-country and there is a need for them to understand the cultural realities of working on the ground locally. These local mentors have access to our more senior distance experts (as needed) providing access to a deep knowledge pool. YSEI also have extensive linkages to higher end technology resources in the United States, Australia, the UK and New Zealand as well as an extensive network of entrepreneurs via our commercial network who are available on a much more limited basis.

Idea!s Team and Simon Healy (mentor) from OrphanIT in Manila