Did you know that the average cost of an MBA program costs 70.000 EUR per year?
What often makes MBA programs so attractive is the aspect of peer mentoring and classic senior leaders’ mentoring in a tightly walled garden career-long business network. Yet while surrounding yourself with the right people is priceless, the price tag of such programs is often one, which not everybody can afford.
Set out to change that, the idea for Manatee Mentor was born in October 2020 with the goal to remove the expensive price tag and barriers by liberalizing mentoring. The three international founders believe that mentoring for professional development can be made affordable, equitable, and all the while creating jobs and supporting economic development.
Within 3 months, the cofounders ran an online survey, published a video prototype of the solution and interviewed over 300 professionals from around the world with the goal of identifying the ever growing pains of professional growth and organizational development. The main response was simple – 80% of surveyed confirmed that today’s organizations are unequipped and incapable of measuring the value of mentoring as a strengthener of company culture. 70% of people said that top mentors are inaccessible, while 85% confirmed that the alternative – paid coaching and training – is often unaffordable, especially in low-and middle-income countries.
The surprise was elsewhere: 90% of the surveyed confirmed they have an interest in being both a mentor and a mentee at the same time. This led to the creation of Manatee Mentor, whose goal is to be the digital platform to match mentors and mentees by making mentoring simple, trustworthy and accessible to anyone. There you can be both a mentor and a mentee at the same time, and get rewarded for it. With the help of its users and the first of its kind Artificial Intelligence model, the team believes that it can make success predictable: for both individual and organizations.
Our vision is transform the way people build themselves and their businesses up through values of solidarity, courage and curiosity.
Today, over 400 people from around the world have already signed up for the launch of the platform.
The Beta launch is planned for February 2021 with an Android app, which will be freely downloadable for anyone to sign up as a mentor and/or mentee. Over 40 from experts and key opinion leaders from organizations such as Amazon, Google, Novartis, seniors@work, the World Health Organization, EMCC, Angelus Funding, Stage-Co, AGBU, Nina Space, Influencio and more have already backed the venture by becoming Founding Manatee Volunteer Mentors.
You can sign up and learn more at www.manatee-mentor.com
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