Quick presentation of the Trust-Me project courses in English, Finnish, French, Hungarian and Romanian.

Cross-cutting comparative study presenting the state of art of mentoring SMEs in the participating countries with special interest in the role of VET (Vocational Educaiton and Training) institutions in it.

Drawing upon this analysis the conceptualisation of a model will be carried out. This model will include the necessary competences and skills of an SME mentor enabling him/her to help SMEs’ CEOs improve the performance of his/her enterprise.
The outcomes of this research will be a preliminary competency framework and skill card of SME mentors.

The trainings to be developed will target two groups:
- the future mentors who can candidate themselves from the academic sphere
- the entrepreneurial milieu and CEOs who wish to be mentored.

In order to be taken for the participation both target groups need to cope with entry requirements.

Modules 2 and 3 are the central training modules of the TRUST-ME project where module 2 focuses on soft skills necessary for a mentor to get into fruitful working contact with the SMEs’ CEOs and module 3 concentrating on the analytic competences.

The two modules are new in the sense that one partner with rich experience in mentoring and operating mentor networks but without practice in sophisticated curriculum development joins forces with partners having mastery in developing professional courses for SMEs with diverse pedagogical approaches but not in mentor trainings and especially not in operating wide networks offering strategic services for CEOs of SMEs.

This training module, called “Diagnosis and accompanying” is the heart of the project where an inclusive and overarching analysis of the enterprise is carried out and followed by counselling and accompanying the CEO. 
A first step consists in drawing-up the cartography of the regional dimensions of entrepreneurship including the analysis of the regional needs, possibilities, concurrences, risks and available financial resources. 
At a second stage a “photography” of the SME is prepared, starting with the CEO, verification of the aptitudes, capacities (strength and weaknesses), depicting of the competency limits; and followed by the analysis of the team, its competences, the key persons and the resources in the team’s disposal.

The assessment procedure to be elaborated in this module is composed of three phases during the project:
- The starting point of the module is given by the results of O1 - Competence framework and skill card for mentors. 
- The digital sub-group of this module will work in coherence with those of the module O3 - Training module 2 - Soft skills of a mentor, and
- of the module O4 - Training module 3 - Diagnosing and accompanying SMEs 
in order to be able estimate learning outcomes anticipated by the ends of the mentioned periods.