First FIDELIS Open Call for Mentors and Peer-to-Peer Support Programme

Through two open calls, FIDELIS will allocate a total of €200,000 in financial support to enable around 40 successful applicants to participate as mentors in one of a series of defined support activities. Each of the defined support activities will focus on a particular theme related to Trustworthy Digital Repositories and will aim to share real-life experiences on tools, methods and/or approaches that have been taken. For the first open call, a total of up to 120,000 will be distributed.

Applicants are able to apply to become a mentor for one or more support activities using the TRUST-Grants platform which is available via the FIDELIS website.

Topics for the first calls are:

• Support activity #1: Trustworthy at national and international levels
• Support activity #2: Data curation, access and preservation policies
• Support activity #3: Fostering engagement between repositories and end users
• Support activity #4: Active Data Curation for technical repository staff
• Support activity #5: Training approaches for repository staff and end users

Applicants are expected to clearly demonstrate the following:

• Which support activity they are applying to join. For those wishing to apply to more than one support activities as a mentor, separate applications for each will need to be completed.
• What experience they can bring to the given support activity (max 200 words)
• How they think this experience might be useful to others (max 200 words)
• What they are hoping to gain through participation (max 150 words)
• Option to provide any other information they would like to provide (max 100 words)
• Confirmation that they are in an eligible country
• Declaration that they are not a beneficiary of the FIDELIS project
• Confirmation that they will provide the 10 days of effort as outlined

Eligibility:

• This call is open to individuals. Applicants must reside and/or work in an EU or Associated Country for the duration of the grant.
• The call is not open to individuals affiliated with direct beneficiaries of the FIDELIS project.

Evaluation:

Applications will be reviewed by three members of the FIDELIS team. The evaluation will focus on bringing together a range of experiences and viewpoints. We aim to ensure a good representation of different viewpoints so we will aim to ensure a good balance from different geographic areas, different repository types and levels of maturity, and different disciplines.

Effort required from successful applicants and duration of the support activities:

• The maximum number of days required to participate in any of the defined support activities will not exceed 10 days. A full breakdown of the effort required from successful applicants is listed on the project website.
• The effort will be be spent preparing for, delivering, and promoting the outcomes of the support activity (June-December 2026)
• The actual delivery of the support activity will not exceed a period of 5 months (between June and October 2026).

Compensation for mentor participation in support activities:

• Successful applicants will receive a standard day rate of 500 EUR/day to support their active participation in a given support activity.
• The support activity will require 10 days of effort and a total of 5000 euros will be paid upon completion of the support activity.
• Financial support will be payable by invoice to the FIDELIS cascading grants coordinator (Trust-IT) upon successful completion of the support activity.

For further details, please see the Mentoring and peer-to-peer support programme section of the FIDELIS Training & Support webpage. Consult our FAQs on the same webpage for additional information. Queries can be sent to training-fidelis@postit.csc.fi.