The Importance of Monitoring and Evaluation in Mentoring Programmes

Monitoring provides mentors with structure, clarity, and space for reflection. It helps track progress through short notes, check-in forms, or conversations with mentees. This allows mentors to better recognise how mentees are evolving, identify challenges, and adjust their support based on cultural, linguistic, or social contexts.

For example, mentors may observe that some mentees participate more actively in physical or group activities than in formal discussions. Recording such insights allows for adapting approaches to better fit each mentee’s comfort level. Monitoring is therefore not about bureaucracy — it’s about learning to read and respond to human change.

Evaluation takes this process a step further by asking why certain strategies succeed and what could be improved. It brings together mentors, coordinators, and sometimes mentees to review progress and lessons learned. Through evaluation, teams can identify effective practices, strengthen weak points, and ensure that mentoring remains relevant to mentees’ needs and goals.

Evaluation can be simple — a shared discussion at the end of each cycle, a quick survey, or a reflection session. What matters most is using the information gathered to adapt and evolve the mentoring practice.

For women with migrant backgrounds, mentoring is often more than a personal growth journey — it’s a pathway to social inclusion, confidence, and empowerment. Monitoring and evaluation allow mentors to see how participation in mentoring affects not only individual confidence but also social connections, well-being, and sense of belonging.

By reflecting on this progress together, mentors and mentees co-create a narrative of growth and agency, ensuring that the mentoring process remains truly empowering and inclusive.

Monitoring and evaluation encourage collective accountability. When mentors share their experiences and feedback with coordinators or peers, they help identify common challenges and successful strategies. This shared learning environment strengthens trust and improves programme quality.

M&E also gives mentors recognition for their work by making the invisible visible — documenting the effort, care, and adaptation that mentoring requires.