There are many opportunities and roles that exist within Catalyst. For someone newly joined, it’s a steep learning curve to get to a position where they are able to understand the ecosystem and how they can involve themselves in the various opportunities available.
What’s more, it is a rapidly changing and growing ecosystem with lots of opportunities and knowledge that is evolving and undocumented. Much of the valuable insights and nuances of how things work are gained through experience and held by people.
Mentorship is a proven tool for opening up specific and relevant pathways for individuals by providing access to knowledge and networks. OneUpOneDown (“OUOD”) is an AI-powered mentor matching platform to support individuals to access knowledge, networks and to transition into pathways that might have otherwise been inaccessible.
We propose developing a network matching pool to generate mentor-mentee matches between experienced and new members within Catalyst.
We will leverage OUOD’s existing matching process, which facilitates 3-month long matches and uses an automated matching model to create the best matches within a network.
Once we have an established pool of Catalyst mentors, this pool can be a source of knowledge and networks for new users or organizations who wish to create pathways into the catalyst community through the tool of mentorship
OUOD’s mentor-matching solution is designed to build trusted relationships, based on cross over between the mentors current skills, both personal and professional, and the mentees desired state. The matching logic is based on a concept called ‘near-peer mentorship’, which means the mentor is a couple of steps ahead of the mentee in a specific area of development. This means the learning gap is wide enough that the mentor can add value to the mentee, based on their experience, but not so wide that the experience is no longer present and relevant for the mentor. This create a value exchange that is valuable for both the mentee and the mentor.
Through effective and engaging mentor matches, new Catalyst members can receive the guidance they need to access the opportunities that are most relevant to them, gain confidence in their ability to participate in roles, take on more responsibility and deepen networks within the community.
This proposal covers the product development work required to build out the pool functionality and to run a Catalyst pilot mentor-matching program for three months.
Our solution will provide the following components:
- Mentoring platform powered by a machine learning matching engine
- Automatically proposes high-quality mentor matches
- Administrator dashboard allows program managers to make and monitor matches
- User dashboard for updating profile, preferences and responding to matches
- Best practice mentoring tools are built into the platform to support mentors and mentees in roles
- Catalyst mentoring pool, promoted to the Catalyst community and discoverable for OneUpOneDown users
OneUpOneDown's programme is designed so users can be matched on an ongoing basis. Once mentors and mentees finish their 3-month match, they can be matched again to provide ongoing support through mentorship. It supports the development of deep networks within a community.
Once we validate the suitability of our matching system within the CatalystEcosystem, we plan to build a mentorship DAO upon the Cardano blockchain, enabling the flow of tokens to reflect the value provided within the mentorship network.
The main risk is not getting enough mentors signed up to the programme. To mitigate this risk we will promote the benefits of being a mentor and recruit through Catalyst channels, groups and our networks. We also have the support of Catalyst School. OUOU's programme is designed to be manageable and enjoyable for mentors, which supports mentor recruitment efforts.