Last Monday, 25th of September, at 6pm started the 3rd edition of the Met Community program in Bilbao in an incomparable setting, the University of Deusto. A day some of us were looking forward to and with some butterflies in our stomachs. There we were Antonio, Virginia, Irune and I.
This post has a double purpose: on the one hand, to make the launching of their third edition of the program known and, on the other hand, to thank the support of the group of mentors and mentees who have bet for MET Community this year by making some time off their agenda.
The mentoring program for entrepreneurial women that promotes MET Community started on Monday with a special session of training where a broader group of mentors attended willing to eliminate fears, share experiences, do networking but, above all, learn from each other. For that we had a very special speaker, Antonio Tena, a big support of the MET Community in Bilbao, who took over Indalecio Gil, who last year came from Madrid to be with us and “pass” the torch to Antonio.
Although Antonio wasn’t new in MET, it was his first time as a “trainer-animator” of the new mentors, men and women with a lot of experience and big curriculums who have decided benevolently to bet for MET but, above all, for the new mentees, entrepreneurial women who are looking forward to their new mentors. The moment is getting closer. Before I continue, I would like to highlight that “our” mentors are, first of all, normal people, men and women with their feet on the ground, and if anything identifies them is their compromise with each other, their responsibility with the mentees and, of course, their passion for their work, which they make available to help other people.
Last Monday it was about making some terms clear and “eliminating fears”, many of them unfounded, about if the new mentors were ready to develop their role or not. Trust, quality, personal satisfaction, personal and professional development, entrepreneurship, innovation, people, process, disinterested assistance, emotions management, empathy, patience and compromise, a lot of compromise, responsibility, willingness and gratitude were discussed. Some of the people who accompanied us were very comfortable, because they were not new on these cases; others, on the contrary, showed certain nervousness in case they kept up with it or not, but they were all grateful for the opportunity that was being offered. And that, I assure you, isn’t paid with money.
You can imagine that from MET Community we feel grateful for the unconditional support of this group of people that have approached us from the most different scopes of action (architecture, engineering, law, psychology, marketing, economy, sociology, journalism, etc.). What else could we ask for?
This year, MET will once again make available to the new mentees the great people and professionals that we’re sure will perform their duties as a mentor/like how it’s supposed to: promoter of reflection and self-analysis, connector of people and organizations, identifier of opportunities and lever of action, and adviser and source of information, among others.
We are going to make the best of the 9 months of personal and professional development process that are ahead of us. On Wednesday 27th of September we welcomed the new mentees and on the 6th of October we will meet, again, with the mentors and mentees for the speed-matching. From there, the new mentoring adventure will be waiting for the whole MET community and, above all, for those people who one day they thought they wanted to share with us the trip to entrepreneurship through a process of help and disinterested and grateful compromise for all the people who participate.
See you on the way.
Enjoy the week.
Translated by María Ubierna Quintanilla and supervised by Arantza Arruti.