Having volunteered for The King’s Trust for 15 years as a Mentor, I was pleased to be asked to design and deliver a Mentor training programme for new volunteer mentors and to go on and supervise these mentors. I continue to mentor young people and deliver mindset work shops
The Company
The King’s Trust is a charity founded in 1976 by Prince Charles, to help vulnerable young people get their lives on track. It supports 11 to 30-year-olds who are unemployed and those struggling at school and at risk of exclusion.
The Background
I have been volunteering with the King’s Trust since 2007 as a Business and Progression Mentor supporting young people who are looking to start their own business or are looking to get into work. I have gone on to partner with the Trust to design and deliver a mentor training programme, training up new mentors working with young people, that was piloted in the East Midlands and rolled out nationally. Mentor training and support provides mentors with the confidence, tools and approach to mentoring young people that ensures that mentees are getting the best possible support and mentors feel equipped, supported and confident in when they mentor young people.
How I Help
Developing Mentors
Last year, I was approached to provide training and support to new Mentors volunteering on the Get into H & SC programme.
The aim of the programme is to train and support mentors and provide wider support to young people at the Trust. The mentor development is aimed at existing and new mentors and creates a ‘toolkit’ for taking the young person on their journey.
The programme utilises a range of interventions to ensure that mentors gain a full understanding of mentoring skills, knowledge, requirements, and responsibilities.
We built in opportunities for mentors to gain knowledge and awareness about the programme, and what mentoring is, before committing to the training day. They will then have a training day to practice and develop their mentoring skills, which can be observed throughout the day by the trainer.
As part of the quality assurance process, all mentors are required to attend supervision sessions, we also run ‘drop-in’ sessions for mentors to get additional support and share experiences with other mentors. This programme has been accredited by the Institute of Leadership & Management; mentors can choose to go through an assessment process to gain accreditation.
Delivering Mindset Workshops for Young People
From our work with young people myself and another mentor identified the need to support young people in their mindset and I now run mindset workshops for young people who are on the King’s Trust Enterprise programme. It is important that as small businesses, we embody an entrepreneurial mind-set in order to remain competitive and make our businesses the best that they can be. Being able to adapt to change, thinking innovatively, being passionate and continuously looking for ways to improve are crucial to making a business successful.
The workshop is all about raising awareness to what it really means to take on the mind-set of a business owner by building awareness of yourself, by being your best self, promoting your business by promoting yourself; understanding the drivers for your business, being able to tap into a deeper understanding of yourself to be the best you can be for your business; knowing personal strengths and weaknesses and identifying goals and actions to discuss with the Mentor.
Developing a Peer-to-Peer Mentoring Programme
The aim of this programme is to develop young people, who have been mentored, to support future mentoring and programme delivery through peer-to-peer mentoring. To pass on the baton of mentoring, to give other young people the opportunity to be mentored and gain the benefits that they experienced.