Jusoor Entrepreneurship Mentorship Program

The Jusoor Entrepreneurs Mentors Network drives entrepreneurial success of young Syrian professionals by matching experienced and supportive mentors with early-stage startups. Jusoor provides support at a wide range of stages – from ideation through acceleration – through bootcamp trainings, provision of seed funding, and ongoing mentorship.

Mentors are volunteers who are successful business owners or executives across the globe. Mentors are chosen not only for their expertise but also for their skills as advisors and coaches, and their enthusiasm to support entrepreneurs. Mentees are young Syrian professionals based in Syria and the region seeking advice and guidance on building and developing their business and social ventures. They participated in and passed an entrepreneurship bootcamp run by Jusoor, and were selected by it to receive ongoing mentorship for their startups.

Mentor Profile:

• Established and experienced business owner or top level executive
• Desire and ability to mentor an emerging business or social venture
• Willingness to openly share business knowledge – both successes and failures
• Willingness to commit to meeting with a mentee at least once every two months (meetings will mostly be online)
• Willingness to engage in a mentorship relationship for 6 months to 1 year

Expectations for mentors

The core expectation of mentors is to provide support, counsel, ideas, feedback, and guidance to their mentees. Mentors are expected to coach on elements of business growth, strategy development, and business practices, and provide access to a network of support where applicable, including potential clients, partners, and investors. The mentorship program provides guidance only. All work, business decisions, and outcomes remain under the full control and responsibility of the participating mentees.

Meetings should happen at least once every 2 months and are expected to be no longer than one hour sessions (over Skype or Google Hangouts) where the mentees give the mentors an update on the business and challenges and the mentor helps them think through them and advise them on the best way forward. The Mentor is also advised to give the mentees targets that are evaluated on follow up sessions. The entire mentorship period is expected to last for one year.

Jusoor hosts recorded Hangout sessions with established entrepreneurs to answer questions on startups.