If I may be of any help, I want to share with you soem conversations I've had on the issue. We had an online chat with Gagriel Diaz maggioli and my ELTManagement studetns on professional development, and it was surprising to see that my students were asking development to be given to them while Gabriel was trying to help them see PD starts within you. SO, Yes, I would say that a mentoring scenario may very well imply your standing up and inviting someone to join you in the project. You can count on us to support the project, for sure, but that is the first step.
As a DoS, I started the mentroing program in the institute where I worked but mentoring can not be imposed, it creates/ comes with a certain working culture at least from a top down pèrspective, so it is not easy either. What's more, it is quite complicated from a managerial perspective because if there is no transparency it can be read as fake...
and last comment, the other week, in the tapped In chat, Angi, Val and I mentioned the fact that even if you convince the people at the Ministry of Education, it cannot efective if you don't get the idea going at classroom level. That's where I am standing right now, on how to move beyond one specific organization into a wider context.. (excuses for Typos :-)

Interesting issue. I would say that mentorship can be informally established between mentees and mentors, and then benefits of the mentorship relationships created can be brought to the attention of the administrators.

This was exactly how I began a program, since I believed strongly in the mentoring process and there was no budget for such 'luxuries'. I was working with a cohort of second –careerers who were 'training' at a teachers' college on a govt. subsidized accelerated program. I encouraged each one of them to choose someone to be their mentor (a friend or a teacher at the school where they were doing their teaching practice), making it clear that there would be no remuneration, but they would have some privileges (material or 'spiritual') conferred on them by the college. In most cases , the mentees were happy with their choices and the volunteer mentors (vms) gained a great deal - not materially, but professionally. So this brings up another issue, too: how well-suited must the mentor and mentee be , and how well - or whether! – should the arrangements be engineered?
We gave the vms some peremptory training, and asked that everyone - mentors and mentees – keep a journal. We held an occasional forum, where the mentors could share their ideas, woes, and general information (not the confidential parts) about their mentees.
A strong bond built up between the mentors , and the second careerers became a strong cohesive group.
Fortunately, although we used much of the format of the model for the following year, we were able to get some financial remuneration for the mentors of the next cohort because the Ministry of Education decided to invest in mentoring programs in a few districts, in order to reduce the attrition. And it did!
How did people hear about the success? Because some participants conducted an Action Research Study which was published in a local newsletter, Which brings us back to the value of AR in our mentoring enterprise!

That would be a non tesol mentor but within the field of education, right?
From the many mentor uses,the one that cosntantly come s to my mind is the one of life mentor, now I realize it is hard for me to focus on the differences because I am more attracted by the qualities mentors may have in common than by thier differences. What's more, I feel that differences may be more given by the predominant role the scenario sets to them (acculturator, sprokesperson, etc.) than by the nature of their mentoring. What do you all think? thanks in advance for your enlightening words!

How intimidating for the mentee is to be coached in L2 language use? Should a mentor coach on L2 issues?

It seems (from our experience) that being a teacher in the same discipline is only preferred for the high school and fiurther ed. teachers , whereas in the elementary and junior high school sectors, knowledge of the particular discipline is not valued; classroom management and general procedural knowledge are more important. However, when the teacher (novice/struggling) is a non native speaker of English ( to use the 'old' nomenclature) there is a stronger desire to be mentored by a native (-like) English speaker.This obtains all the up to Uni. level teachers. I suppose this is what Ben is referring to when he notes the differences in focus.