Program co-ordinator

Mutual expectations were brought to the surface and discussed. Furthermore, the expectations of the program co-ordinators were also explained, which included topics such as the frequency and duration of meetings. In this respect, 2-hour sessions once a month were deemed appropriate. 

Responsibilities of program co-ordinators, relationship supervisors and trainers... 

Let us now look at the responsibilities associated with the program co-ordinator, the relationship supervisor and the trainer in more detail. 

There are usually two types of trainers within mentoring schemes external facilitators/consultants who train program co-ordinators and relationship supervisors and trainers (internal or external) who are responsible for equipping mentors and mentees with the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to make relationships a success. To make things simpler, we will typically use the term trainer to refer to both types, but will make it clear, whenever a further distinction is necessary. 

A manager (from, for example, the HR department) who knows a lot about mentoring/men to ring schemes and who has either done training before and/or could be effectively trained for the role - please note that this manager might be the program co-ordinator. 

Roles within a mentoring scheme (e.g. who the backers are, the program co-ordinator, supervisors, administration staff, mentors and mentees). 

Next you might want to stipulate the roles that need to be filled within the implementation team. As mentioned previously, these involve the program co-ordinator, potentially one or... 

Having decided on the vacancies that need filling, determine the number of people needed for each role. This should be done in accordance with the number of mentees and mentors you are planning to recruit. Then you can draw up job descriptions and selection criteria for each of the vacancies. With regard to the selection criteria for trainers, relationship supervisors and (if still necessary) the program co-ordinator, please refer back to Founding the implementation team and Table 8.1. 

The extent to which the program co-ordinator needs to collaborate with others and delegate tasks The scale of the budget needed... 

Mentors and mentees as well as line managers, relationship supervisors and the program co-ordinator must undergo training. Mentors and mentees must attend this prior to being matched. Profiles of mentors and mentees are used to match pairs. Mentees are given several options to choose from and preferences with regards to particular mentors are taken into account. 

In this scheme, mentoring is a specify nature of reiationship, e.g. one-to-one). They are expected to last for specify duration of the relationships) and pairs are meant to meet on a weekly/fort-nightly/ monthly/hi-monthiy) basis. The relationship supervisor (program co-ordinator) will supervise the mentoring relationship. S/he is the first point of contact for mentors and mentees should there be any queries/problems. S/he is also responsible for providing feedback to the program co-ordinator regarding the success of the relationship. 

The program co-ordinator will provide feedback to the steering committee. Apart from this general feedback, the relationship is... 

Within this scheme, the program co-ordinator is obliged to... 

Program co-ordinator(s) Skills training and briefing on scheme and role... 

Again, if the program co-ordinator is not conducting this part of the training anyway, s/he should still attend it. This is because... 

Mentors, mentees and program co-ordinators can begin to establish a relationship... 

In cases where relationship problems are serious and cannot be resolved between mentor and mentee, you might want to suggest that they should contact the relationship supervisor or program co-ordinator. (For more detail on problems in mentoring relationships, see Chapter 11.)... 

Acting as the first point of contact for mentors and mentees should there be any questions or problems liaising with the program co-ordinator about problems and potentially... 

As mentioned in the introduction of this chapter, we are assuming that the program co-ordinator of your scheme does not require further briefing, either on the scheme or on the role. We are also assuming that he or she is familiar with mentoring and the implementation and maintenance of mentoring schemes. However, should this not apply in your case and your coordinator does require support on these aspects, you can use the materials previously provided in this book as guidelines ... 

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