In the current economic and employment context that is characterised by a drive towards competitiveness, innovation and flexibility, the Mentor project intends to help SMEs in their technological development, through the activation in management of the skills and functions of mentoring which can create training programmes to contribute to the competitive repositioning of companies and to make workers fully qualified for their duties.

The ultimate goal of the Project is to identify, construct and test a mentoring model for SMEs together with a methodology for taking action and a packet of operational tools.

The mentoring model which it is intended to develop, allows management to:

• Assess and anticipate the training needs of the human resources deployed by the company;
• Design and plan suitable professional training programmes;
• Monitor and assess the results achieved.

As part of these functions the management which has acquired mentoring skills will be able to:

• Take the opportunities offered by European and national tools aimed at implementing permanent learning strategies (for example interprofessional funds for continuous training),
• Represent in the appropriate venues the training needs of companies (by promoting a process of bottom-up communication).