Barcelona Activa’s mentoring service has so far helped two hundred people
Barcelona Activa’s Mentoring+ programme, involving a hundred mentors, has so far provided support for two hundred people looking for work. Many of the participants are women over 45 with few qualifications.
The Mentoring+ programme is now in its twelfth edition and operates in nearly all city districts. Its goal is to relaunch the working lives of people who have called it a day and given up looking for jobs due to the difficulties of the labour market.
People on the Mentoring+ programme are largely women (61%), over the age of 45 (87%), with primary school certificates or no studies (42%). The Barcelona Activa plan is an initiative to tackle the wage gap in the labour market.
Mentor profiles are diverse in terms of careers and professional experience, the majority having university qualifications (80%) and nearly half being over 50 (47%).
Barcelona Activa works to help mentors and jobless people in the same neighbourhood connect and collaborate. The idea is for them to develop a relationship based on trust, driving new dynamics and knowledge as a way of ending the isolation, in some cases prolonged, of people out of work.
