Digital Mentors are people we work with to help to train, advise and inspire our clients in the use of social technology. Our clients are usually defined as “digitally excluded”, but may also be socially excluded too — we focus a lot of our work on NEETs – young people not in employment, education or training.

Digital Mentors need to either be working with social media, or using it personally on a regular basis — doing it as part of the rest of their activities, not something separate. We Share Stuff feels that the use of social technology shouldn’t be seen as different, difficult, or “something else to learn”, but simply another way to connect and create.

Digital Mentors need to be confident in trying new tools and networks, passing that confidence on to others — our aim is to use informal learning, letting clients chose their own reasons for interacting. That means that we don’t prescribe types of content, sites or tools to use, but instead help instil the knowledge to choose the appropriate way for each task and the basic skills and confidence to learn the rules and techniques of the tools.

We are an accredited OCN (Open College Network) provider and are working on our own social media course that will fit into QCF framework. No previous teaching or assessment experience or qualifications are necessary, but there may be opportunities to gain them.

As our work is project based, we need to be able to engage freelancers to help deliver training — work may not be regular, and we will have a team for each project. Some availability in normal working hours is much preferred. We’re based in Birmingham (UK) so most of our work is based in and around the West Midlands.

Our Digital Mentors need to be comfortable with working with young people, and in some instances may require a CRB certificate and/or public liabilities insurance (we will both advise and help on these issues).

Drop us a line in the first instance, and we’ll talk.