The app provides 1,000 hours of pro bono mentoring and can be adapted to various categories of beneficiaries from different fields
Bucharest, November 17th, 2021 – Romanian Business Leaders Foundation launches Antreprenoria, an app which digitalises the classical business and social enterprise mentoring process, making over 1,000 hours of guidance available to entrepreneurs, provided by volunteer entrepreneurs. The project is financed by the Vodafone Romania Foundation with a budget of RON 216,000.
The development of the mentoring app was accelerated in the context of the health crisis and the need of SMEs and social enterprises to continue to receive support in order to avoid bankruptcy or to identify new ways to develop.
“Since 2014, we have been supporting the mentoring activities organised by Romanian Business Leaders Foundation and this is why we welcomed the idea of developing an app which would calibrate and optimise the meeting between mentor and beneficiary (mentee) and which could be used by small businesses and social enterprises alike. The app is open source and can be taken, adapted and configured by any entity willing to connect communities eager to offer mutual assistance, the benefit being that they will be saving time and a sizeable part of the development costs”, declared Angela Galeța, Manager of Vodafone Romania Foundation.
“Through the digitalisation of the mentoring process, we intend to increase our contribution, by also offering access to support to SMEs and social enterprises from less developed cities in Romania, where entrepreneurs don’t have that many options. The contribution of each mentor is very valuable; therefore we invite them to join the programme. For example, in the past eight years, the voluntary contribution of mentors from the “Antreprenoria” programme towards the development of the Romanian entrepreneurial ecosystem surpassed the market value of EUR 10 million”, declared Dragoș Dinu, leader of the “Antreprenoria” programme.
Having at its core the over eight years of experience of Romanian Business Leaders Foundation in conducting face-to-face mentoring programmes, the “Antreprenoria” app uses new technologies and features a mechanism which can match mentors and mentees automatically.
Any entrepreneur or manager who wishes to support an SME or a social enterprise can become a mentor by downloading the “Antreprenoria” app from Apple Store or Google Play and creating a mentor account after enrolling in the dedicated webpage on www.antreprenoria.ro/mentorapp. The mentor will be automatically registered in the programme with 10 hours of pro bono mentoring. After filling in the profile, with the aid of an automatic matching mechanism, the provider will be suggested to entrepreneurs who are looking for help. Also, mentors can organise online pro bono webinars/workshops, which will be listed in the app’s calendar and which any beneficiary can participate in, free of charge.
The entrepreneur in need of support can create a beneficiary account in the app, which grants them 10 hours of pro bono mentoring, subject to an extension, depending on the progress of their projects. The 10 hours of support can be used either towards mentoring conversations with the entrepreneur who accepted their mentoring request, by creating a common project, or towards participating in online workshops provided by the programme mentors.
In the app, the mentor and beneficiary can have real time conversations, check the progress level of the objectives and project they are working on together, can filter the topics discussed and can view and validate the number of hours available for mentoring. In addition, for the organisations which connect communities with the aim of mutual assistance and which are prospecting the implementation of a mentoring programme, the app provides a management system by means of the administration panel.
For more information, please access www.antreprenoria.ro.
The “Antreprenoria” programme was launched in 2012 by the Romanian Business Leaders Foundation with the aim of educating and supporting future business leaders to better run their businesses. Since 2014, Antreprenoria continued to develop and, with the financial support of Vodafone Romania Foundation, became a platform for support and social involvement for the new generation of entrepreneurs. To date, over 800 trainees or entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs have benefitted from the support of this programme.
Romanian Business Leaders Foundation (RBL) has been, for 10 years, the voice and means of action of business leaders to build a Romanian society in which future generations would want to live in. It is an apolitical, non-governmental and non-profit organisation which offers a platform for action and social involvement for over 1,000 entrepreneurs and top executives in the private business environment. So far, through its activities, it involved over 100,000 Romanians – aspiring entrepreneurs, high school students, new and experienced entrepreneurs, Romanians from abroad or from rural areas, trainers, speakers and educational leaders. More details can be found here. RBL is a founding member of the Coalition for the Development of Romania (CDR), a private initiative which offers a coherent base for consultation with government and other public institutions on topics which have an impact over the economic and business climate in Romania. For more information, please access www.rbls.ro.
The Vodafone Romania Foundation is a Romanian nongovernmental charitable organisation, established in 1998, which operates separately and independently from the company’s business. Over more than 20 years of activity, the Vodafone Romania Foundation has funded 1,168 programs run by 765 NGOs throughout the country, in the fields of healthcare, education and social services. The projects had over 3 million beneficiaries – children, young people, elderly, physically, socially, or economically disadvantaged people. So far, the Vodafone Romania Foundation has invested 31 million euros in projects run by non-profit partner organisations. More details about the Foundation’s programs are available at www.fundatia-vodafone.ro, http://jurnaldebine.fundatiavodafone.ro and www.facebook.com/fundatiavodafone.
