We celebrated the first 10 years of Creative Mentorship!
On Saturday, October 22nd, we gathered with our alumni, partners, patrons, and friends, to toast to the first decade of the Creative Mentorship program! After ten years, we came back where everything started – to the Museum of Science and Technology to look back at the years behind us and to cherish the long way we came.
If we try to sum up the first 10 years of our program, it would look like this:
- 5 completed cycles and the current 6th which we will complete in November of this year
- 300 participants = 150 mentoring pairs who went through our one-year program
- Over 2000 hours of mentoring conversations
- More than 70 workshops, round tables, and study trips organized
- Over 250 media appearances
- 7000+ social media followers
- 35000+ video views
- 8 members of the advisory board and 4 members of the honorary board
- With our support and initiative, other mentoring programs were launched in Serbia, the region and Europe
- Dozens of projects, programs, new initiatives, and creative ideas were initiated by our mentees during and after participating in our program
- 10 years of exchanging ideas, knowledge, thoughts, energy, support, and love
These numbers are here just to remind us how much we have grown, developed, and progressed together with all of you over the past 10 years!
There are many reasons to celebrate, and we always eagerly share our joy with people who have been following, participating, and supporting our program for years. We are eternally grateful to the Embassy of the United States of America in Serbia, the Embassy of Sweden, Embassies of Spain, Austria, and Portugal for their consistent support and firm belief in mentorship. The kind and encouraging words of her excellence that Annika Ben David, the ambassador of Sweden, and Holly Zardus, the cultural attaché of the Embassy of the United States of America in Serbia, shared will surely stay long with us as a motivation for least the next 10 years.
Without the support of the Ministry of Culture and Information of Serbia as well as the companies Medicon, Coca-Cola HBC, and Titan Cementara Kosjerić – many of our goals wouldn’t be as achievable. Thank you for being there, and valuing our hard work.
However, the potential of both participants and the team wouldn’t be brought out without skilled educational partners from GI Group, who helped us to set up the educational program and who support and empower us from the beginning. Relja Dereta, Stella Karl Ćosić, Pamela von Sabljar, and Predrag Cvetičanin, are also among those who lead the way in knowledge exchange and deserve recognition. Thank you for sharing our values and being open to the learning processes that mentoring includes. Also, thanks to Nova Iskra and Mokrin House for sharing space with us and giving us a creative push when needed.
Last but not the least, we are thankful to the ETC group which initiated and dreamed up the idea of Creative Mentorship a decade ago. We are proud to say that the current team members are doing them justice and are bringing the best out of the program. Thank you, Dragana, Višnja, and Tanja for not giving up even when it seemed impossible to realize the vision you had. Thanks to Larisa Halilović Murtić and the whole Advisory and Honorary Board for the hard work and guidance.
The celebration was all the while better because the participants of the current, regional, 6th cycle joined us as well – after a whole day of workshop in person. This weekend was the occasion for them to establish the foundation for rounding up a year of work with their mentors in the best possible way, later in the month of November.
