Professional and personal growth through Business Mentorship Program

Requesting party (and partners):

Consortium partner(s):

Professional growth through personal development

Co-creation of Q-Point, NL Business Hub and EKN Kenya present the Business Mentorship Program:

Kickstart your startup and grow your entrepreneurial career, as successful members of the NL Business Hub mentor young Kenyan aspiring, starting entrepreneurs.

The program goal is entrepreneurial competence building by focusing on mentorship of soft skills and attitude development linked to two tracks in this cross-border journey, full of activities on:

Discovering your personal strenghts
How to coach/mentor?
How to set personal and professional goals?
Business management skills
How to present yourself and your business?
Networking in practice!
Company visits for real-life experience
Intercultural organizational management

Context: Entrepreneurship in Kenya

Students and young entrepreneurs are being incubated all over Kenya in order to empower the new generation of agricultural professionals. The country requires a workforce capable to establish businesses that contribute to developing the private sector and Kenya as a whole nation.

In business incubation trajectories, incubatees receive mentoring from supervisors on aspects ranging from production and bookkeeping to market research. However, post-incubation, very few new companies are created and the vast majority stops immediately after the incubation period. Why? This is caused by a variety of challenges.

The knowledge and support on how to set up a business is offered during incubation, but support in the transition from incubatee to independent business owner is not provided. Interpersonal skill development is poorly or not at all included in the incubation trajectories, let alone personal branding, pitch training and soft skills as communication and negotiation.

This leads to a lack of funding eligibility based on criteria of banks and microfinance institutions. The mentorship program is fully designed to foster entrepreneurial career growth through skill development and connections building to grow the professional network of both mentors and mentees.

Project goal and outputs

The Business Mentorship Program over-all goal is professional and personal development by growing the entrepreneurial career of young Kenyan entrepreneurs and members of the Netherlands Business hub as succesfull business owners, and establish a valuable connection between mentees and mentors as lifelong community of entrepreneurs that can draw inspiration from each other.

The impact of the project is to:

… contribute to mutual skill and knowledge transfer and personal & professional growth

… strenghten the blooming relationship of Kenya & The Netherlands

… leave a positive mark as Dutch business community

Two tracks of the Business Mentorship Program:

Ongoing personal development by 1-on-1 mentorship and peer coaching throughout the program
Live inspiration sessions in Nairobi on entrepreneurial soft skill development, networking and business management etc.

Mentors & Mentees

For mentors:

A chance to give back to society
Transferring expertise onto next generation
Learning from talented young people
Expanding your network

For mentees:

Opportunity to further expand entrepreneurial competences (knowledge, skillset and attitude)
Building connections and grow professional network
Meeting inspiring peers!