One Page Summary

Task based peer-to-peer learning is an effective and scalable method for learning new skills. In peer-to-peer learning a mentor teaches skills to a novice by directly working together on a project. This is a widely used approach in modern company environments for transferring knowledge of experts to less experienced team members. A less experienced team member usually works on a real assignment under the supervision of an expert (i.e. his mentor) when he can ask questions for soliciting domain knowledge and for learning technical skills. Traditionally such mentorship is also known as master-pupil relationship and it has been widely used across centuries and across cultures for educating young people in craftsmanship, arts and sciences. I propose an innovative solution that combines such mentorship model with outsourcing, freelancing or crowdsourcing projects, for sharing knowledge and for training immigrants in technical skills. A mentor and an immigrant will pair in a team to work together on an outsourcing, freelancing or crowdsourcing project. The mentor will train the immigrant on related technical skills, while working together to develop a solution. An immigrant will gain hands on experience on actual industry projects and consequently he will integrate in the local economy. The interaction with the mentor will also help the immigrant to socially integrate in the local community. The mentorship model that I propose is a natural extension to existing model of MentorProgramma Friesland.

I propose to build an online content management tool, where outsourcing, freelancing and crowdcourcing projects will be posted and where a mentor and an immigrant will form a team that is specific for this project and develop a solution together. It's important that a team is project specific and it's not persistent throughout the platform. This model ensures that an immigrant can learn skills from many mentors by working together with them on different projects.